


Repeating Herself

by Lizardon



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bad Puns, Childhood Trauma, Dadster, Everyone Needs A Hug, Good W. D. Gaster, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Medical Trauma, Multi, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Sans/Alphys, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Pseudo-Incest, References to Undertale Genocide Route, Timeline Shenanigans, Undertale Genocide Route
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-09 09:03:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13478157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardon/pseuds/Lizardon
Summary: Alphys is forced to decide whether she would rather save her once-best friend, who is becoming more and more distant or the mysterious man history tried to erase, that she is slowly remembering.Dark, darker, yet darker.(Post-Pacifist ending to start, but it's going to deal a lot with resets so that's not a forever thing)





	1. Reconnecting With An Old Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Humbly recommending you read [ "Jokes and Half-Truths" ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13256703) before digging into this story, though it's not exactly required reading since I think pretty much every important thing is explained here.

Alphys took a deep breath and knocked on the door to the skeleton siblings’ house. No response came from within the cabin, not so much as a light turning on or a creaking of stairs. She knocked again, louder. There was silence for a second, then two, then long enough she was sure he wasn't going to answer because he was out or worse, he was ignoring her. 

“Sans!” Alphys yelled as loud as she was capable of yelling on purpose. “P-please, come out! I want to talk to you!” The only response came from the hiss of icy wind whipping snow drifts off the roof. She huddled up tight in her jacket, this weather was no place for an exotherm.

Toriel had already tried talking to him. Undyne had already tried talking to him. Grillby had even made an effort. He hadn’t had a word to say to any of them besides “hey, i’m ok, bye” even when Undyne had ripped the door off its hinges and screamed in his face for an hour. She had called Alphys while stomping home. She said that he was a total bonehead, and that if anyone could get through to him it would be her. “You guys can bond over your nerd stuff. Didn’t you two used to work together?” Undyne didn’t have any idea how close she and Sans had once been. Needless to say, that wasn’t the case anymore.

Did he hate her? It was possible, likely even. They hadn’t stopped talking on the best of terms. She sighed and turned away from the doorframe, resigning herself to look for him in the warmth of his favorite hangout spot. Even if he wasn’t there she could at least find some respite from the cold.

“what's up, doc?” She jumped in fright. A prank, of course. Typical Sans.

“Oh! H-hi. How do you do that?” He gave one of his signature sheepish grins. 

“you know me, i just know a couple shortcuts. anyway, come in before you end up a doc-sicle.” 

He led her inside and pointed for her to sit on the free-range laundry pile masquerading as a couch. She glanced around the once-cozy Snowdin home. It was a total wreck. There were takeout containers and junk food wrappers scattered across every flat surface, reminding Alphys of her own lab. At one time his brother would have kept the house neat and tidy, but Papyrus had long since moved to the surface and only Sans had stubbornly remained underground. She found herself scanning the trash heaps for empty liquor bottles. Luckily, she saw none. Whatever was bothering him now was at least not causing him to relapse on his sobriety. Or he had been embarrassed enough to clean up the bottles, lest anyone find out he was drinking again. Though considering she had spotted more than one suspicious tissue pile amongst the garbage, she doubted Sans was cleaning anything out of shame. She sat herself down on the least disgusting side of the couch.

“So... H-how have you been?”

“‘s all good, al. what are you doin here? you hardly came to snowdin even when we were trapped underground.” She could be imagining it, but there seemed to be something accusatory in the way he said that last sentence. She remembered a technique Papyrus had taught her. “DON’T LET IT GET TO YOU, OF COURSE. IF THEY AREN’T GOING TO SAY HOW THEY’RE FEELING, THEY MUSTN’T BE FEELING IT TOO STRONGLY.” The secret to self-esteem was willful ignorance, if Papyrus was to be trusted.

“Snow’s n-not uh, so good for reptiles. C-cold blood?” Was that the truth, or was it that she didn’t want to face him? “N-nobody’s seen you on the surface lately.” He shrugged.

“when you’re as bright as me you don’t need the sun to look up to.” This conversation was going to go nowhere if she let Sans have his way. Years of not talking to him had clearly not made him any less dodgy. Maybe he was reverting to how he had been when he met her, and all he needed was a friend. Was she still qualified to be his friend?

“I uh, do you-would you like to watch something with me?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her well-worn copy of Akira. Sans had loved that one in college, even if it was way too gory for her taste. He scowled at the DVD in her outstretched hand.

“you didn’t break years of distancing yourself from me just to watch anime, al.” Yeah, it was fair to say he hated her. She knew she was going to need to have this conversation with him eventually, she just had hoped it would be after they’d warmed up to each other again.

“W-well, that’s kind of uh, your fault? You just…left? And you never said where you were going. J-just packed up and threw a resignation letter on my desk.” The next time she’d heard about him, it was Undyne complaining about her lazy good-for-nothing sentry. He and his brother had apparently moved back to the cabin in Snowdin. Why anyone, especially Sans, would give up a prestigious career as a scientist to do grunt work for the Royal Guard had baffled her. Since she was his only co-worker, she was forced to assume it was something she had done. “I m-miss you, Sans.”

“do you really miss me?” She nodded. His face was unreadable, but nothing about his posture seemed conciliatory. The way he hunched his shoulders leaning forward on the couch looked like a defensive stance. “or do you just want me? cuz you are one thirsty lizard. must be a desert species. horny toad?” He laughed. This was very much not how she had been hoping this conversation would go down. “well, news flash, al. you’ve got undyne now, and i’ll bet my left femur she’s a better lay than me. i get it, skeletons are exotic, but we already tried this once and i’m not too excited for a repeat of last time.”  
“  
W-what the hell is wrong with you?” Did all those years of friendship not mean anything to him just because they technically started with a stupid crush and a drunken mistake? She buried her head in her claws as she felt tears run down her face. She was an idiot, of course he wasn’t going to just forget about that. You don’t get to have sex with your friend and then act like it never happened. She felt his hand pat her frill in a half-assed comforting gesture.

“ah, shit, al. don’t cry. please. i don’t really mean what i said. i’m still carrying some baggage from…that, but it’s my problem, not yours.”

“C-can you just talk to me, for once?”

“look, i got skeletons in my closet, al. i’ll be the first to tell you that. but the thing is, you’re not really equipped to deal with them. if you really wanna help, just leave me alone. we’ll both be better off for it.”

He had somehow already made his way to the door and was holding it open. She considered doing what she would usually do in a stressful social situation like this, which was some combination of panicking, hiding, and passing out. No, she had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t run from her problems anymore. And besides, Sans was once her best friend in the world. He was sick, he was isolating himself. She knew better than anyone what horrors could follow. Even if they weren’t friends anymore, she owed this to him.

“s-sans, I came here to talk and that's what I plan to do. I know why you're pushing people away. A-and I know because I've been through that too.” She squeezed her arm with her claws. It seemed like forever, but it was only a couple of months ago that she was hiding away herself, bearing the secret of the awful thing she’d done. He slammed the door shut behind them. His pinprick eyes were fixed on her and she could feel a sudden crackle of powerful magic in the air. He looked predatory, dangerous, unhinged.

“al, you good-intentioned fuckin moron. you have no idea at all what i’ve been through.” He sighed and clenched his hands into fists. The magic dissipated just as quickly as it had flared up and his face returned to its usual neutral smirk. “but eh, how can i expect you to? you literally won't be able to understand.”  
“T-try me.” He sat back down on the couch and leaned back.

“do you remember the royal scientist before you?” She shook her head. As far as she knew she was the first. 

“It was just you and me, a-and then it was just me. The lab was deserted before us.” 

“so, you know the same as always, then. don’t remember him at all, huh?” His eye sockets were drooping. He looked like he was moments from falling asleep. 

“V-very funny, Sans.”

“ain’t it, though? the best part is i already know you won't believe me. this isn’t the first time we’ve had this little heart to heart. you won't remember it of course, thanks to the resets, but i sure do. ‘scuse me for thinking the joke’s getting stale.” He peered at her confused expression. “shit, i need a drink.” He stood up and disappeared into the kitchen, then returned with an extremely dusty bottle of liquor under his arm.

“i’ve been sober for how many years now, al? ten?” She stared with disbelief at what he was about to do just as much as what was coming out of his mouth.

“T-twelve.”

“twelve, damn.” He smashed the top of the bottle off on the corner of his coffee table. “almost a shame to stop being dry bones after this long, but it doesn’t really matter, i guess. want some?” the pupils disappeared from his eye sockets. “actually, never mind. last time you did that we ended up fucking.” He put the shattered bottle lip to his teeth and chugged the contents down while she cursed every decision she’d ever made.

“S-Sans…please don’t-”

“you said you wanted to know what's been chilling my bones, al. well, the tequila’s put me in better spirits, so how about i share what else i remember that you won’t? i remember all the times i'd go down to the true lab and find an alphys shaped pile of dust and an ‘I’m sorry Undyne, I always loved you’ note next to it like anyone but me even knew the true lab existed. did you think undyne was ever going to see it, doc? cuz the only one who ever got the pleasure of finding you was me. and y’know who had to tell everyone you weren’t coming back, had to tell my bro you ‘went on vacation’? also me.” He punctuated his last sentence with a long swig of the bottle.

Her eyes widened. No one knew she had ever been thinking of doing such a cowardly thing, not even Undyne. Frisk might have, but they weren’t exactly one for talking. She hadn’t done it, though, she’d pulled herself up with help from her friends. “How do you-did you-?” He cut her off.

“and speaking of pap, how about all the times i've had to see my bro being killed a thousand different ways? it doesn’t get easier, no matter how many times you see it.” The darkest laugh Alphys had ever heard from him escaped his chest. He threw the freshly emptied bottle on the ground. Bits of glass exploded in every direction, forcing Alphys to imagine what a soul shattering looked like.  
“you wanna know why i stay down here when the whole surface is waiting for me. do you know how many times i’ve seen the damn surface now? i’ve seen my bro become a racecar driver, seen him be slaughtered by humans the moment we came down from ebott. i’ve seen you and undyne get married and live in domestic bliss, seen you break up with her and off yourself a week into our freedom. you, uh, have a knack for killing yourself, really.” He closed his eye sockets and waved his hand dismissively. “so there’s your answer: nothing matters. will you go away now? make like a tree and fuck off.”

“Sans, you’re scaring me. I-is this some kind of joke?” It had to be a joke, right? Just another classic unexplainable Sans prank, like how he could come up behind you without making a sound. But even if it was some confusing joke, why did he sound so genuinely hurt? “I-I know things about you your brother doesn’t, you know. We r-r-rubbed souls, d-damnit. You’re not lazy, you’re depressed. Scared. Hurt. M-maybe you feel like I did. Like you want to die. I c-can understand that. But I don’t understand resets. It sounds like-”

“crazy talk, right? well al, what does sans and pecans have in common?” His face was completely humorless. “we’re both nuts. i wouldn’t believe me either, and my doctorate is in this particular kind of quantum fuckery. you remember my thesis?” That was twelve years ago, but she’d proofread it only about a thousand times for him, so it wasn’t like it was easy to forget. She didn’t exactly understand all of it, but she’d gladly take confusing physics talk over whatever craziness Sans was just going on about.

“Uh m-multiverse theory? Infinite number of possible realities, something about quantum immortality? I uh, I’m not really versed in quantum physics. That was more…your thing?”

“yeah, you got the basics. now, do me a solid and grab another bottle, since you’re clearly not planning to leave. if you’re going to waste my time on this temmie shit, i’m not doing it anywhere close to sober.” She had already stood up before she realized what she was doing, then threw herself back on the couch in a huff.

“You promised me you wouldn’t drink anymore.”

“yeah, well, if you wanna get to know the real sans, you better start by learning he’s a big douche who breaks all of his promises.” She didn’t budge. “fine, i’ll get it myself.” In the literal blink of an eye he was sitting back down next to her with a fresh bottle of tequila in one hand, and a notebook in the other. She winced as he chugged the tequila down like water. Skeletons must have a crazy high alcohol tolerance. 

“now, where was i?” He looked absentmindedly at the notebook in his other hand. “oh right, waste of time, pile of temmie shit, etcetera.” 

He flipped the notebook open to a blank page. “alright al, let’s say you and i are in this universe, universe a.” He drew a circle with a letter A in the middle of it. “now we’re going to assume that usually universes can’t interact with each other whatsoever.” He drew three smiling stick figure skeletons in the circle. “cuz that’d be stupid, of course. ‘universes’ is just our lazy way of talking about infinite branching possibilities for reality to play out in. other universes don’t exactly exist so much as they have the potential to exist.” He took a long sip from the bottle. “sorry, i get semantical when i’m drunk. ok, now imagine if our universe just…died? putting it in layman’s terms. total universe collapse, brought on by a righteous skullfucking of the laws of physics.” He scribbled over the circle and drew another one with a letter B in it. “but we’re supposed to exist, and it’s not like reality can cope with such a big paradox as everything is supposed to exist but nothing does. so what it does is it looks at all those infinite possibilities, and it merges the dying one with our friend over here, universe b.” He tapped the B circle. Alphys was following this surprisingly well, so she took a chance and interjected her own theory on the matter.  
“It would have to be a v-very similar universe or there’d be internal paradoxes. But, uh, if there’s infinite universes, it would just be a matter of merging with a universe where only the problem with the last one didn’t exist. R-right?” He smiled at her, and it looked genuine. Did he miss these intellectual debates with her as much as she did?

“now what if that problem was a person?” He looked down at the scribbled-out stick figure skeletons. “where does a universe-ending paradox go when it can’t exist, al?” He drew a single frowning skeleton next to a question mark.

And then suddenly everything made sense.

Just as suddenly, Alphys felt her soul tighten as if something was squeezing it. Her claws dug into the couch in pain. Her lips moved silently, trying to form words with no voice. Finally, as if possessed, she was able to speak. The voice that left her mouth didn’t sound like her own. “Uh, Sans, w-what was the name of the former Royal Scientist?” 

Sans dropped his half-finished bottle on the ground. He looked like he had just been electrocuted. His pupils were the widest and roundest Alphys had ever seen them. “gaster, al. his name was dr. wingdings gaster. he was our dad, yours and mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not a physicist. I have never even taken a formal physics class, and all of my knowledge about quantum physics comes from binging Wikipedia. So to every physicist reading this, I am very sorry for bullshitting my way through any timeywimey shenanigans this fanfic is going to delve into. If anything seems too bullshit for you, just remember this is a world with magic and stuff. 'A wizard did it' is a hack writer's favorite trope, after all.
> 
> I am, however, a huge biology nerd. Just wait until I get to writing for Gaster, it's going to be a goddamn blast.


	2. An Explanation and a Plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Official theme music for this chapter, and general 'This AU's Sans's Big Mood' is [ I'm Not a Vampire by Falling in Reverse ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60JKaeDtTi0) because I'm a sad little edgelord.
> 
> Content warning in this chapter for: Discussions of dubiously incestuous relationships, post-traumatic flashbacks, bad coping mechanisms, and phony Latin titles.

“W-w-what?” 

Sans was grinning ear hole to ear hole, oblivious to Alphys’s abject horror.

“you asked me his name, al. you’ve never done that before. i don’t even remember how many resets it’s been, but you’ve never asked me about him. you just said i was crazy every time.”

Alphys didn’t have the heart to tell him she was definitely thinking that he was at least a little crazy. Not that he looked like he would be listening to her if she had. He was far too busy climbing the nearest laundry pile with complete drunken abandon.

“my name is dr. sans gaster, and my bro is papyrus gaster, and you al, you’re alphys gaster.” Too much tequila had clearly taken a toll on his stability, but he still stood proud on his mountain of dirty clothes like some ridiculous conqueror. “because we’re the fuckin gaster family, al. wingdings’s kids.”

“S-Sans, I’m sorry to interrupt” She bit her lip and waved her hand. “Uh, whatever this is, but…what? W-we’re not related, Sans.”

“not biologically, obviously. skeleton plus question mark don’t equal lizard.” He started jumping excitedly on the top of the laundry pile. Sans. Jumping. Sans, moving around unnecessarily in an action that could be considered exercise. Papyrus would be so proud. Or he would be proud if it wasn’t for the fact that Sans was drunk, and also possibly had gone insane. “that stuff hardly matters right now, though. don’t you get how important this is? i couldn’t even say his name before, al.” He giggled wildly, those drunken ‘nyeh heh hehs’ she could remember from the last time she had seen him this wasted. “dr. wingdings gaster! my dad!”

He hopped off the laundry pile, sending bits of debris flapping about. Alphys hoped for a moment that he was ready to have a proper discussion now that he’d gotten that little bout of madness out of the way. The deranged smile he was still wearing said otherwise, unfortunately.

“say his name, al.”

“Uh, S-Sans…”

“no, that’s my name. say dad’s name.” He grinned expectantly at her. She noted that he looked a lot more like Papyrus with such a big genuine smile on his face. Even his spooky eye sockets looked gentler. She mostly wanted Sans to calm down and explain himself, but that grin was darn infectious. It had been years since she’d seen him smile like that.  
“Wingdings….Gaster?” He suddenly tackled her in a giant hug. The smell of tequila coming from his mouth combined with the still-lingering weirdness of the revelation dampened the niceness of the hug a bit.

“oh god al, it’s so good to hear it.” He slumped into her shoulder as if his body finally remembered that it was supposed to be in a constant state of exhaustion. She could feel his soul hammer weakly in time with the creaking of his ribs breathing in. There was a long, heavy silence filled with only the sound of Sans trying to even out his breath. “you must think i lost my mind. the resets did this to me, al. i never used to be like this. you remember that at least, right?”

She was kind of unsure how to answer that question. Whatever had happened to Sans in the time they’d spent apart had clearly taken his toll on him. He’d always been secretive, but he’d never been even close to as viciously hostile as he was being today. The Sans she remembered from college and the time they spent in the lab together was troubled, sure. But he was also friendly, approachable, and charming. This Sans seemed like he was only looking to destroy himself with little concern for who he hurt in the process. She still wasn’t completely sure she believed him about the resets, but it was obvious that he was nursing serious scars from something. And if he was telling the truth, well, she couldn’t even imagine what that was like.

“S-Sans. Why was the skeleton crying?” 

“why, al?”

“H-he didn’t have no body.” He gave a half-hearted chuckle that was thick with that horrible alcohol smell.

“al. i’m a fuckin awful person. i don’t deserve nobody.” She thought about the Amalgamates, about the way she put Frisk in danger just to make herself feel better, about how she procrastinated on Mettaton’s body so he’d have to stay around her longer, about how her current visit had made Sans relapse after twelve years of being sober.

“That’s ok. I, uh, I am too.” It wasn’t Undyne’s impassioned speech about loving yourself for who you are or Papyrus’s blind optimism about the goodness in everyone, she wasn’t the kind of monster who could pull off those words and mean them. But, it was something, and something was all she had to offer him. “W-we can be awful people together.” He stumbled backwards and tripped, landing on his ass in a pile of socks. He didn’t look like he even noticed his fall. His pupils were fixed on the floor.

“you sound like dad, al. he used to say things like that when i would beat myself up over something stupid i did. he’d say ‘if i’m awful and made something as wonderful as you, you can be half awful and do even better things.’ he was always so hard on himself, it used to drive pap crazy. but he loved us so much. the only time i ever seen dad smile was when he was lookin at us three.”

“D-does your br…” Alphys hesitated when she realized he was technically her brother, too. “Does Papyrus remember him?” 

“nobody does, just me. i used to think i was crazy, it’s why i drank so much. why could i remember a whole person, a whole different life, that just didn’t exist?” He curled up on the sock mound in a ball of misery. “and of course, i couldn’t even say his name back then. i couldn’t tell pap, i couldn’t tell you, so i tried to rot enough of my brain away with booze that i’d forget it. part of me wanted to just be crazy, since that's a much more convenient explanation.” There was a hesitant emphasis on the way he said the word ‘convenient’ that put their whole relationship in a different light.

“W-Which uh, brings us to the thing n-neither of us are going to want to talk about if I r-really do have a dad I don’t remember.”

“yeah. that.” She caught him peering at the half-finished bottle he had dropped earlier. She could definitely excuse him for wanting to drink now. She was kind of tempted herself.

“Uh, there’s s-still a chance you’re just crazy, right?” That was an extremely rude thing to wish for, but it was miles better than the alternative. 

“easy answers don’t always mean right answers. that was one of the things they taught me at those aa meetings you used to drag me to. drinking’s easier than remembering, deciding that i’m crazy is easier than thinking about how i took my big sis to the fuckin bone zone. thing is, i’ve been looking for proof i’m not crazy, al. with all these damn resets, i’ve had nothing but time and nothing better to do. and after all the paradoxes i found, i’m surprised this universe hasn’t shat the bed the same as the first one. some of them are so obvious they’re funny. you ever read ‘osteo-arcania’?”

“Uh i-isn’t that like, the only book on skeleton monster biology?” What did that book have to do with anything? She was currently trying very hard to forget her knowledge about certain specific parts of skeleton anatomy, not study it.

“dad’s a great writer, ain’t he? no, wait, stupid sans, that book wasn’t written by dr. wingdings gaster, widely renowned biologist and actual fucking skeleton, it was written by ‘anonymous’.” He laughed like a madman. “because there’s so many monsters alive today that were around before skeletons went extinct, right? oh, and while we’re at it, if skeletons have been extinct since the barrier went up, where the hell did me and pap come from?”

She had never even considered it, which was extremely odd, because it was weird. All the history books had said skeleton monsters were extinct, wiped out in the war with the humans, yet there was blatant proof to the contrary living in an unassuming cabin in Snowdin. And nobody, not once, had paid the contradiction any mind. Almost as if the universe itself had made them gloss over it.

“who built the core, al? you’d think we’d know this, since it was literally our job to keep it in working order. any idea? how about your little science fair project? you’re not a biologist, your doctorate’s in fuckin computer science. who wrote those notes on determination, built that machine in the true lab for extracting it?” She gasped, all the pieces of another mystery suddenly clicking into place.

“Osteo-Arcania, the uh, the skeleton biology book. It s-said that every skeleton has their own special dialect. Papyrus t-talks in that regal voice. You always sound kind of uh, goofy. The Determination notes were in some weird code. It looked like hands and smiley faces and stuff to me, b-but you said you could read it fine. The book had that writing in it, it said it was another skeleton dialect. It said what the dialect was called, too, but I c-can’t…” It was giving her a very bad headache to try and remember the name of the dialect. She massaged her forehead, frustrated. She could remember everything else about the book, it had been a good read. Skeletons were very interesting monsters, it turns out. She had especially loved the chapter about…actually, it seemed like the more she tried to think about the book, the more of it she was forgetting. Her headache pounded worse with every second. “I can’t remember, Sans.” She looked him in the eye, feeling like she was the crazy one, and not him, for the first time all day. 

“wingdings. dad’s dialect.” He took one of her claws in his hand and dug his pointy phalanges into the soft part of her palm. The pain distracted her from her headache. “say his name again, al.”

“Wingdings Gaster?” He sighed with relief and let go of her hand. “Your…our dad. We r-really messed up, didn’t we?”

“me a thousand times more than you. you didn’t know, at least. i knew full well what i was doing, and i still…” His voice trailed off. “awful fuckin person, literally.” She was completely unsurprised when he picked the tequila up and resumed sipping from it.

“I uh, I don’t blame you for it. If it makes you f-feel any better.” She reached out her arm for the bottle, an action that spoke louder than whatever meager words she had just said to him. He silently dropped it into her outstretched hand and crawled two feet away from her, an action that said more to her than whatever meager words he could’ve replied with. She had to make this better somehow, if only for his sake. If the way he treated his brother was anything to go by, he obviously cared deeply about his siblings’ feelings. A group she was now, for better or worse, a part of. “You t-thought you were going crazy, r-right? And it’s not like we’re actually r-related, just uh…” She shivered and took a swig from the bottle. The tequila burned as it went down her throat.

“he adopted you. well, in our original universe, anyway. your bio parents died in a cave-in, right?” It was true, she’d spent two thirds of her childhood living in an orphanage. It wasn’t the worst upbringing ever, but she struggled with the nagging guilt that she wasn’t supposed to have lived, either. Learning that Sans had been parentless himself had helped her move on. She admired him so much, and he never gave his lack of family besides his brother a thought. Or it had sure seemed that way. She was finding out fast the truth had been much more complicated. “i think he only had wanted to make you his apprentice or something at first, but it turns out dad’s a big ol’ babybones who can’t not adopt adorkable weeb lizards, i guess.” Adopted. She could work with that, even if it made her suddenly start missing a life she never actually had.

“I w-wish I could remember him.” She had a family, two brothers and a dad. A life she’d never get to know, a life Sans only let himself remember when he wanted a reason to hate himself.

“what’s there to remember? he never existed in this universe. there’s nothing of him left,” He drummed on his skull with his knuckles. It made a hollow clacking sound. “besides what’s up in here, and even that gets spottier every reset.” He stood up slowly. “anyways, you probably have to go tell everyone what’s going on with me now, right? let ‘em know i fell off the wagon, made you cry. i don’t want their pity, al. or yours, really.”

“I don’t- I’m n-not leaving you like this, Sans. I-if you don’t want my pity, what do you want?”

“i want dad back. i want to hope for something again.” He snatched the bottle of tequila out of her hand and finished it off. “since i can’t have that, i want to wake up at my sentry station still being twelve years dry bones with my bro yelling at me to recalibrate my puzzles. tell frisk that next time you see them. little shit’s dragging this reset out way too long. heh, maybe i’ll kill the kid on sight this time. it’s been a while since i felt that nice tingly rush of love.” Sans had said he was an awful person, but was she willing to believe he was a child murderer? Especially if the child in question was Frisk, the gentlest human she had ever met.

“W-we can do it. Bring our dad back, I mean. He’s uh, not as gone as you think. His inventions, his books, they’re still here. And, and!” Her voice accidentally went very high pitched with excitement as she came to a realization. She let her inner shoujo heroine take over as she struck a dramatic pose pointing at Sans. “H-his sons! I m-might just be adopted, but you’re a skeleton like he was, y-yeah?”

“shit. al, you’re a genius.” He disappeared, and then reappeared standing inches away from her. His arms were full of folders. “i have an idea. it’s a really fuckin stupid, dangerous idea. dad would’ve loved it.” He laughed drunkenly and shoved a particularly large folder in front of her snout. Though it was hard to make out anything that close to her face, she could see writing on the front. Smiley faces and hands. “y’know what this is?”

“Our d-dad’s language?” He facepalmed.

“oh yeah, you can’t read wingdings. it says ‘mortis regenesis: skeletal replication by means of soul-splitting’, dad really liked his phony latin. these were his lab notes when he was making me and pap. half of it’s total nonsense to me, but there’s some useful stuff. like this.” He shuffled through the contents of the folder, stopping on an illustration of a monster’s soul. Various bits of the soul were labeled in Wingdings. She couldn’t understand the writing, but it seemed like it was indicating where to make surgical incisions.

“He cut into s-souls?”

“he cut into his own soul, al. took big chunks out of it. did science on himself while he was probably half-dusted, and still managed to take decent lab notes full of those hilarious fake-ass latin names. dad was a total badass. anyway, you better study that diagram really well because you’re about to try it on me.” Her own soul jumped into her throat, and even though she’d only had a sip of the tequila her stomach was doing flips.

“Uh, I c-can’t do that. I’m uh, n-not even officially a scientist anymore.” Which was true, but not at all the main reason she refused him. There were a number of reasons, most forefront in her mind at the moment being ‘I am currently having a panic attack at the very idea of ever experimenting on a living thing again.’ And speaking of that panic attack, she was suddenly having a very hard time remaining upright as her legs suddenly went limp underneath her. She tried to steady herself, but it was useless. Her mind was far too busy flashing horrible memories of creatures melding together in agony. “S-Sans, I can’t. I can’t.” She leaned on him, hyperventilating.

“chill, al. you can do it. it’s not brain surgery.” He gripped her shoulders. “it’s only soul surgery. huge difference.” His stupid joke helped ground her a little bit. She took the folder from him.

“I-I’ve never done anything like this, taking out a piece of someone’s soul. Why would y-you even want that?”

“i’m not a regular monster like you, my soul’s not made from two monsters putting their magic together. me and pap, well, i guess you could call us clones? dad made us from those parts of his soul he cut out. more importantly, that means that not just in a stupid mushy metaphorical way, some of dad is always with me.”

“So, uh, what’s the plan?”

“i’m going to give part of my soul to you. good news is you’ll get some of dad’s powers, bad news is you’ll get some of dad’s powers.” She suddenly wished she could remember anything from Osteo-Arcania. It had entire chapters on the magic types unique to skeleton monsters. She remembered she heard skeletons were once the highest mages in the Royal Guard back when the Royal Guard had been enough monsters strong to have separate mage and infantry divisions. Undyne had told her that, while laughing and admitting it was the only reason she’d never fired Sans. “There’s so much potential in those two, Alphy, but all one of ‘em does is sleep through his shifts and the other one wouldn’t even hurt a fly!” And now Sans was offering her a piece of that raw potential, and all she had to do was violate a few ethics conventions. Relapse on one of her own bad habits, as it were. 

She reached in the pocket of her jacket for her cell phone, silently praying that none of the Undernet service towers had been damaged since everyone moved to the surface.

“I’m uh, not saying I’m agreeing to do this, b-but…” She tapped her claw on the contact lovingly labeled ‘WiFE ^3^’. Sans was drunk. Her own head was full of too many conflicting thoughts to be impartial. But Undyne would understand, she always did. Even if the science behind it would probably go over her head. "I w-want to talk to my girlfriend about it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends the 'Sans and Alphys faffing about while nothing interesting happens' chapters. I have terrible pacing problems writing, yeah. The next chapter will contain Action! Intrigue! Undyne! Things happening! Expect an update on either Thursday or next Tuesday, depending on how fast the little goblin in my brain can write it.


	3. A Recovering Liar and a Relapsing Prankster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Official edgelord theme for this chapter is [ Currents Convulsive by Pierce the Veil ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws1WXMh1BjE) , though if you have a favorite edgy song that uses surgery as a metaphor for unhealthy relationships feel free to substitute.
> 
> Content warning in this chapter for: Heavy discussion of alcohol abuse, mentions of self-harm, mentions of suicide, post-traumatic flashbacks, and medical body horror. (...Also a friendly reminder to mind the archive warnings!)

Undyne did not exactly have the most calming voice in the world, but to Alphys’s weary ears it might as well have been a lullaby. Any remaining anxious jitters from her panic attack moments ago disappeared with the first words that came from the other end of the phone.

“Alphy! How’s my kissy cutie love lizard? Any luck reasoning with that bonehead?” She took a deep breath. Talking on the phone was still pretty difficult, but she’d been trying to get better at it. She was about to reply when she noticed her phone wasn’t in her hand anymore.

“hey fish lips, it’s me, your girlfriend. did you know mew mew kissy cutie 2 is my favorite show ever? also did you know me and sans fucked once in col…” 

“S-Sans!” She snatched the phone back from him, which did not prove to be terribly difficult since he currently had the coordination level of a toddler. He was too invested in laughing at his little prank to care she’d taken the it back anyway. “S-sorry about him, he’s…” she scowled at him, praying Undyne had only thought that second sentence was another joke. “He’s really drunk.” Undyne laughed ferociously for a second, but suddenly went silent.

“Wait, isn’t he like, a recovering alcoholic?” There was a booming voice from the background that very quickly killed Sans’s giggle fit.

“HE SURE IS! MY BROTHER’S NOT SO MUCH AS HAD A SINGLE DRINK FOR TWELVE WHOLE YEARS. I’M SO PROUD OF HIM!” Alphys heard Undyne cough nervously. Sans was wearing an expression of pure guilt. She took a tiny bit of satisfaction from him having to face the consequences of his actions.

“Yeah, uh, Pap…I take it your chat didn’t go too well then, huh.” 

Alphys laughed at the absurdity of the understatement. Where to even start? In summation, she’d learned that an entire monster no longer exists, that man had been her adopted father, reality sometimes resets itself for no reason, she’d apparently killed herself in most of those resets, and Sans may or may not be a child murderer.

“It’s uh, it’s been a l-long day.” And the day wasn’t even over yet. Sans, not content to simply completely shatter her perception of reality, was now asking her to operate on his soul like he was some kind of lab rat. “S-Sans is not doing too good.” Undyne must’ve handed her phone over, because Papyrus’s once-booming voice was even louder now.

“DR. ALPHYS, IF MY BROTHER IS WITH YOU, TELL HIM I LOVE HIM AND I’M VERY SORRY I CALL HIM LAZY SO MUCH.” He paused, his voice dropping from full volume shouting to what a normal person might describe as an ‘outside voice’. “Frisk has been telling me about this thing called ‘self-harm’.” The way Papyrus’s voice cracked as he said the phrase ‘self-harm’ stabbed Alphys right through the soul. She remembered that she’d concluded the secret to Papyrus’s self-esteem was willful ignorance. She never considered what that actually meant for him as a person, a person who’d seen his brother succumb to addiction and been unable to stop him. “Please do not let Sans think I don’t love him. He’s honestly the most important person in the world to me.” And with that, his voice was back to its usual loudness. “THE GREAT PAPYRUS MUST ALSO HAVE THE GREATEST BROTHER, OF COURSE.”

Sans’s face went from pure guilt to soul-crushing agony. He was muttering to himself, far too low for the phone to pick it up.

“pap, you’re so cool. you deserve so much more than a kid-killing drunk as your only family. i’m gonna get dad back for you, i swear. whatever it takes.” He looked at Alphys with the lights in his sockets gone. “you’re gonna take part of my soul, al.” The way he said it this time sounded less like an offer and more like a threat. 

She stammered, caught between two brothers both begging in their own ways for her to help the other. She decided to start with the one who was at least being nice about it.

“Papyrus, I uh, I’m going to tell you the t-truth. Sans is r-really s-s-sick. He’s- he’s drinking again.” 

The sound of someone’s façade of naivety shattering into a million pieces was not a pleasant one. She wondered what exactly Frisk had told him. If those scars they tried to hide under their oversized sweater were anything to go by, they certainly weren’t a stranger to the concept.

“HE’S NOT THINKING OF…?” Frisk had told him plenty. Maybe a little too much.

Sans laughed emptily, still muttering to himself. “heh, not this reset, bro. i got tired of dusting myself after i ran out of funny ways of doing it. maybe next time i can take some pointers from al, she’s a real suicide pro.” She was very thankful Papyrus couldn’t hear him.

“He w-won’t do anything like that, I promise. I’m going to…” Well, there really wasn’t any way out of this, was there? A few panic attacks and a couple breaches of the code of ethical science were worth it. These brothers- her brothers, she reminded herself, could be a happy family again. And she’d only have to metaphorically lose her soul in the process. Better than Sans, who was going to literally lose part of his. “I’m gonna help him. I’m a doctor, after all. That’s what doctors do, h-help sick people.” Ignoring that she was never a medical doctor in the first place, and that she’d had her doctorate stripped from her when Toriel found out about the Amalgamates. And that Sans had been absolutely right when he said she wasn’t at all equipped to help him manage his damage.

“NYEH HEH HEH, THE BRILLIANT DR. ALPHYS, AT IT AGAIN!” 

“Damn right! That’s my girlfriend!” Undyne did not let her lack of knowing what the hell she and Papyrus had been talking about stop her from chiming in. She loved Undyne so much.

“I BELIEVE IN YOU, DR. ALPHYS. YOU HELPED HIM OUT OF HIS…” There was a sound of shuffling papers, as if he was reading something. “‘SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOURS’ BEFORE, EVEN WHERE MY OWN GREATNESS COULD NOT. YOU CAN DO IT AGAIN.” She prayed she wasn’t about to let him down, even if she had the sinking suspicion this was not going to end well.

“Uh, t-thank you, Papyrus.”

“Pap, go check up on the brat for me, ok? I wanna talk to Alphy in private for a while.” She heard Papyrus stomp away huffily while yelling something about Frisk not being a brat. “Hey, Sans is in the room with you, right? Can you call him a spineless motherfucker for making Pap a wreck like that for me?”

“sisterfucker.” Sans corrected, not missing a beat. Alphys decided she officially had enough of this ‘talking on the phone’ business with that comment.

“Uh, Undyne. C-Can you meet me down at my old lab? I’m about to do something r-really stupid and I could use some emotional support.” Without another word, Undyne hung up. Which, knowing her, meant she was probably bolting to the lab with reckless abandon.

She turned to Sans, who was doubled over looking like he was seconds from emptying his nonexistent stomach of its contents. Two entire bottles of tequila were apparently his limit. Except she just noticed there was another empty bottle next to him.

“S-Sans, you’re incredible.”

“oh, ’m sorry al, how drun’ you wanna be when someone cuts _yer_ soul ‘n haff?” His slurring was making him practically incomprehensible. 

“H-how are we getting to my lab? You don’t even look like you can stand up.” He laughed like she hadn’t just asked him a completely reasonable question.

“shor’cut, stupid.” She didn’t have time to ask what that was supposed to mean before he grabbed her arm in one hand and their father’s lab notes in the other. There was a blinding darkness that lasted half a second, and then it was over.

 

And they were sitting exactly like they had been in the cabin, only they were now in the middle of her months-long abandoned true lab. It almost upset her to learn how Sans had pulled that prank off after so long.

“bet yer fine lissar’ ass can’t wait till you can do that, huh? an’ jus’ wait till i show ya the gas’ser blas’sers! them fuckers kill that ‘uman real good.” She chose to ignore his drunken rambling; it was only getting increasingly difficult to understand.

Instead, she pried the folder from his very limp grasp and found the soul incision diagram from before, squinting at the Wingdings as if she just needed to look a little harder to be able to read them. No such luck. It was making her head hurt again to keep looking at it. She knelt down to Sans, who was now lying face-first on the tile floor.

“R-read this.” He peeked his head up at the chart, squinting at it like he was reading intently.

“it says ‘dr. gas’ser regrets to ‘nform you tha’ his dum’ass son sans is too fuckin’ wasted to be able to see straight’.” He slammed his skull on the floor. “‘m a wasted waste, al.” He laughed and then slammed his skull on the ground again. She caught his head before he could do it a third time.

“C-cut it out. We can wait until you’re sober enough to read again.”

“you kiddin, al? frishk finds out i’m drinkin’ again, ’s gonna reset. we got like, maybe ‘nother hour afore pap spills ‘is guts to ‘em? then it’s back to the sentry station an’ ‘who’s dad sans?’ an’ sans can’t say his name ‘nymore.” He attempted pitifully to stand up. It earned him one more collision with the floor. He pointed to the dusty operating table across the room. The one she had given her unwitting patients their first doses of Determination on. “think you can lif’ ol’ sans up? shor’cuttin somebody else takes a lot outta me. an’ the tequila, i ‘supose” Her eyes were half-focused on Sans and half-focused on that table. 

As if she was watching herself on TV, she could see herself there whispering promises to the fallen down Shyren that she’d be able to live happily with her sister again as she filled the syringe with that horrible yellow substance, as she injected the poison into her body. Empty promises to reunite a family, and only horror in its wake. 

Sans was saying something to her, but she wasn’t there. He was crawling over to the table, hefting himself up on it, pulling his hoodie and shirt off, but he was miles away. She watched herself apologize to a dog monster for the pinch of the needle, say he’d be up and chasing Papyrus around Snowdin again really soon. Monster after monster, injection after injection, broken promise after broken promise, laying down on that operating table just like Sans was now. She shuddered in agony, only just barely feeling the sting of her claws digging deep into her elbows.

There was a very loud thud from somewhere else in the laboratory, followed by a “NGAAAAAH” that could’ve only come from one monster. Still partially in a daze, she turned around.

Standing in the doorway was one very frustrated looking sexy fish monster, staring at Alphys and the alcoholic mass of bones sprawled half-naked out on the operating table behind her. Her big toothy mouth was wide open in shock.

“U-uh! Undyne!”

“ey look, ‘s the other thin’ you rub souls with. sup, boss lady?”

“Step away from the Determination! I am authorized to hug on sight!” Alphys wrung her hands awkwardly. Of course Undyne would think that was what she meant when she said she was going to do something stupid.

“I’m uh, n-not doing anything with DT. B-but it’s not like it’s any less dangerous, really.” More dangerous, actually. Especially if she only had less than an hour to work, especially if her father’s diagrams were going to be completely useless to her, and extra especially if Sans was going to be too drunk to be anything but a hindrance to her.

One wrong cut and he’d dust in an instant, and the only proof she had that there was even a right way to cut a soul were the notes that might as well be written in gibberish. And, of course, now she was having a panic attack again. Undyne, who was far too used to these little episodes by now, wasted no time running over to her and squeezing her in a very tight hug. 

“Shh, it’s gonna be ok babe.” In her arms, it was kind of hard to not believe that was true. “What’s this spineless floozy trying to get you to do to him?” 

“spinelesh floozy’s gonna give ‘er my soul. jealoush?” She swore she was never going to let Sans get this drunk ever again.

“S-Sans means a part of his soul, uh, n-not l-like all of his soul. Nothing weird like that! J-just a little unethical surgery!” She wriggled her way out of the hug and scampered back over to Sans. She wanted more than anything to just snuggle Undyne, but there wasn’t time for that. She had to do this before it was too late, before Sans was left alone to slowly lose his mind. “We’re going to need a magical current to k-keep your soul alive outside your body.” That part was easy. She’d already done it once with Mettaton. She could work through this mounting panic attack, she just had to think about the things that were going to be no problem to do and not the one thing that was going to go wrong. Just one tiny insignificant little thing that was absolutely going to go tragically wrong. One little thing. She could do this.

“Wait, what did you say you’re going to be doing to his soul, unethical surgery?”

“yep! ’s gonna cut it up ‘till it dus’s errywhere, like a lil fuckin sans piñata.”

She felt every muscle tense in her body as she pictured the tiny bits of her best friend, her brother, covering her hands. Yes, that thing that was going to go tragically wrong. She flipped the switch to turn the magical current on, trying to will those horrible thoughts out of her mind. Sensing her girlfriend’s obvious discomfort, Undyne grabbed her arm.

“Look, Alphy. I get that you want to help people, but this little dirtbag isn’t worth your time. You don’t have to do,” she waved her free arm at the spread of machines around them “This.” She couldn’t tell Undyne everything, not now. She’d break down, and then it would be over.

“I’m s-sorry, but I do.” Her girlfriend looked positively betrayed. It broke her heart. “Undyne, h-he needs me.” Undyne snarled. Her one red eye was burning with rage, staring at Sans.

“I hate you.” She was such a comfortably simple monster sometimes, it made Alphys smile sadly. Directing her hostility at Sans instead of trying to make sense of this crazy situation was such an Undyne thing to do.

“you an’ me bolf, tuna breff. ya gonna star’ cuttin’ me up or wha’, al?” Right, she had no time for sentimentality.

Shakily, she turned on the machine for suspending his soul. A hum of magic energy filled the room as the machine’s beam of blue light streaked toward’s Sans’s ribcage. He pushed out his soul until it met the beam. It hovered above him, glowing in that sickly half-dead way that only Sans’s soul did. She hadn’t even thought about that additional problem. Mostly since last time she’d seen his soul exposed like this it was pressed up against hers, an event she was desperately trying to forget. Oh well, too late for consideration now.

“I trust you, babe. Even if I don’t like this.” Those were exactly the words she needed to hear. “Or him.” Maybe she needed to hear those words too, for some kind of reminder that Sans was being completely unreasonable in his demands.

She looked hopelessly back at the Wingdings-laden diagram. The little smiling faces mocked her, the hands pointed accusingly at her for forgetting her own father’s language. She must have been able to read it in their dead universe, it didn’t even look like that difficult a cipher. Possibly even a one to one substitution for regular letters. Her attempts to learn Japanese were harder than this. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, another headache threatening to form. When she returned her glasses to her nose, the diagram wasn’t in Wingdings anymore. It was written in plain English, honestly looking a little bit like Papyrus’s handwriting.  
She must’ve looked insane to Undyne, laughing and waving a sheet of paper around.

“I can read it!” 

Sans gave a half-hearted thumbs up. He was probably pretty embarrassed to have his soul on display for his former boss, not to mention how he must feel about her seeing it again. She wasted no time grabbing an empty soul container from the other side of the room and placing it on the metal table next to him. She read the diagram as she dug around her collection of surgical tools for a scalpel. With Undyne at her side and her father’s notes to reference, her confidence was replenished. She could totally do this. 

“O-ok, h-here goes nothing…” She memorized the places her father noted would hurt the least to make incisions into, cringing as she realized that meant he must’ve also found all the places it would hurt the most. On himself, if Sans was to be believed. “C-can I do anything to make you any more comfortable, Sans?”

“kiss me.” She froze. “heh, ‘m kiddin ya, al. ‘s a joke on yer stupid anime. ‘m all good, ‘s long as you don’t got ‘nymore boos for me.” She laughed, maybe a little too loudly from tension and awkwardness. Sans had actually managed to make her laugh. This really was going to go just fine. She picked up the scalpel in one hand and took Undyne’s in her other.

The first slice of the knife was met with the loudest, most agonized wail she’d ever heard Sans make. She panicked, wishing she had given him a real anesthetic besides the unhealthy amounts of tequila he’d chugged down. Not that they’d work on him, since he didn’t have lungs to inhale them in with nor a bloodstream to have them injected into. Never mind that, she had to keep cutting. Another ear-piercing scream as she dug a little deeper in. Her whole body was trembling, but she forced her hand to remain still. Undyne squeezed her other hand but didn’t move. Sheer adrenaline pushed her knife onward. One more curve making sure to avoid the place that had been marked as most sensitive and she’d be done. 

Sans had gone silent at some point, probably knocked out from pain. There was still plenty of screaming to go around between her past victims, who were moaning at the burn of Determination turning them to sludge. She tried to remind herself that they weren’t really there, but they were making a decent argument for themselves by continuing to scream. This was a terrible, terrible idea. Sans was going to die. 

Except she had made the last cut, and he wasn’t dust underneath her. She’d done it. She threw the scalpel to the ground like the pain she had just put her friend through was its fault and not hers. She led the tiny fragment of him into the soul container. A little Sans chunk, floating away from the rest of him. She looked down to his body. There was plenty of dust on him, but he was still all there. And his soul was still glowing just as faintly as always. No healthier looking, but also no sicker. Besides the big missing part, obviously.

“Hah! Wow babe, you fucking nailed it.” She hugged Undyne, crying. They nuzzled each other tearfully for what felt like too long and too short at the same time. “Hey, uh, is lazybones there going to get up soon?”

As if on cue, Sans answered by sitting bolt upright and puking magic all over himself. He threw one hand over the left side of his skull, his mouth still dripping. 

“ah shit, my ‘ead ‘urts.” She might’ve chalked that up to the start of a hangover, if there hadn’t been a horrible sound of bones cracking moments later. He pulled his hand off his head a moment, and the sight made both her and Undyne gasp. There was a very deep fracture now running down from the top of his skull to his left eye socket. He picked at it with his index phalange. “heh, it’s no prob, al. got the soul bit, that’s wha’ matters.” And then she noticed something much more concerning than a fractured skull. 

He was shedding fresh bits of dust. He looked down at himself for a moment, the start of another “ah shit” forming on his mouth, but he never got to say it before he dissolved into nothingness.

She cried and yelled at the same time, both melding into a sort of surprised sob sound. What an amazing final prank on Sans’s part, making her think she could do something and then pulling that good feeling right out from under her. The fragment of his soul she’d cut out still beat on in its container, an amazing follow up prank. She ran to the operating table, but her knees gave out and she tumbled into it. Bits of Sans fell all around her like snow as she crashed to the ground.

She dug her claws into the pile of dust and lifted a handful to her face. It spilled out of the spaces between her fingers. “Undyne, I’m uh, n-not a liar anymore, so I have to tell you the truth. Sans and I…” She found herself laughing at how small and petty the whole thing seemed now. Sans’s sense of gallows humor must be infectious. “W-we had a one-night stand in college. E-except, even after a giant mess up like that, he actually s-still wanted to be my friend. C-can you believe it? I uh, don’t care what you say about h-him. He’s a great guy. Before Mettaton, before Frisk, before you…there was him.” She looked at the soul fragment again. Her last chance to make this be ok for somebody, even if that somebody sure wasn’t going to be the one who’s dust she was sitting in. “And he believed in me, even t-though I’ve never believed in myself. And- and I’ve got to try this. For him. I l-love you, more than all the anime in the world, but… well, I love him too.” 

Undyne snarled, again rushing to anger before any harder emotion presented itself. Or at least that’s why Alphys prayed she was snarling. 

“This could kill you.” There was a pleading in her voice that sounded wrong coming from a ferocious warrior. Had Frisk had their little self-harm talk with more than just Papyrus?

“B-but it could save _him_.” She stood up, reaching for the last bit of Sans that still existed.

“Are you nuts? He’s dust! Nothing is going to save him, Alphy. He just tricked you into killing him!” Undyne couldn’t understand. How could she expect her to? She didn’t understand herself until very recently.

“N-no, n-not just Sans…” Windgings Gaster. Her father. The man who loved his children so much it transcended universes. She pulled back the glass of the soul container. “Someone who l-loves me, who I never met.” Undyne clenched her hands into fists so tight it made her biceps bulge.

“What about me? I love you! Shouldn’t what I have to say matter?” She frowned, her eyes never leaving the little piece of Sans in her arms. 

“I c-can s-s-save him, Undyne.”

“Hope it’s worth it.” Undyne stepped back from her. She could hear her crying. “I’m uh, gonna go tell Pap about his brother dying. Good luck putting that dust back together. Maybe he’ll be able make you happy.” And then she walked away. Alphys listened to every last stomp as she trudged towards the elevator, the echo filling the laboratory even after she was long gone. Her whole world only hours ago, leaving her alone on this suicide mission. And she wasn’t even trying to stop her. 

She didn’t have the time, and maybe it didn’t matter either way. If Sans was right, Undyne might forgive her someday. If Sans was wrong, well, she wouldn’t be alive anymore to worry about being forgiven.

All Alphys could do now was take the soul fragment in her hand and push her own soul out to meet it. Squeeze the two together in permanent fusion, just like the long-dead prince must have done with the first fallen human’s. This wasn’t supposed to work. Maybe if she survived, she’d research the idea further. Maybe not.

But it did work, and for a moment the whole world lit up like she was standing on the surface of the sun. Magical energy crackled around her, blinding her, destroying her. She felt herself become something more, something bigger, brighter, and stronger than she ever dreamed she could be.

And then it all went dark.

Dark.

Dark.

Darker.

Yet darker.

…

Was this what it felt like to die?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's coming next? Did someone say Gaaaaaaaaster Chaaaaaaapter? *slams fits on the table chanting 'Gaster chapter' over and over again*


	4. A Sociopath and a Bundle of Rags

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edgy theme for this chapter is [ "The Resurrectionist, Or An Existential Crisis In C#" by Frankiero and the Patience](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmsDXInxOAw) . It s not a happy song, this is not a happy story.
> 
> Content warning in this chapter for: Childhood trauma, adulthood trauma, mentions of suicide, and big sad dad.

Visiting the dump was easily the worst part of Dr. Gaster’s duties as Royal Scientist. It was an inevitable part of his job; science required raw materials, supplies, and equipment and the dump was the only source of many of them.

Still, it was the kind of lowly, disgusting grunt work he would put off on an intern, if he’d had any of those. He worked alone. Asgore often begged him to at least take an assistant, a secretary, anyone, but he always shut those suggestions down with the most firm but polite “No.” he could utter. Solitude suited him too well, he’d say. He worked sometimes for days on end, at all hours of the night. It was unfair to ask anyone to work under such conditions. His work was too dangerous and too confidential. Worst of all, though he’d never admit this reason to the king, the concept of spending any amount of time with another person terrified him. They’d want to have conversations with him, maybe even occasional ones that didn’t concern their work. Maybe even ones concerning dreadful things like feelings. The absolute horror. He’d take a thousand trips to Waterfall to dig through a million piles of human garbage before he’d ever endure a single mind-numbing talk about something as moronic as emotions.

It was amusing, in a way. The monster who spent his entire early career trying to learn everything he could about other monsters was now a recluse. He’d have to remember to laugh, in the rare event his sense of humor ever came back. He sighed instead. These walks to the dump were the worst, they always gave him time alone with his thoughts.

So wrapped up in his thoughts was he that he didn’t notice the object in his path until his foot had collided with it. He stumbled for a very ungraceful second before catching himself. He cursed in his native dialect and prepared to give the offending piece of garbage a good swift kicking before he noticed that the object was moving. Not a piece of garbage at all, but a living thing. It certainly had the appearance of a piece of garbage, though. It was nearly completely covered by the tattered remains of a many sizes too big striped shirt; the very kind children traditionally wore. Glimpses of bright yellow poked out of the many holes in the fabric.

“It is not very wise to sit down where someone is likely to trip over you.” The little yellow mass of striped rags sniffled.

“Oh, uh, uh, I’m very sorry, sir.” The creature had a pitifully quiet voice, made worse by a lisp that turned “sorry sir” into “sthorry sthir”. It didn’t raise its head to speak to him, choosing instead to keep hunched over whatever it was scribbling on.

“It’s also not very wise to sit knee-deep in dirty water. That’s how you catch a cold.” He was not fond of having to play the role of authority figure. Children were kind of dreadful.

“T-that’s ok, sir, I uh, already got a cold.” As if proving their point, they broke out into a phlegm-thick coughing fit, still scribbling fiercely through the coughs. He facepalmed with one of his magical hands. Children were very dreadful, such literal thinkers. Worse, this one was clearly sick, which meant he was basically obligated to help them. He leaned over and put a hand on the shoulder of the bundle of coughing rags. It responded by jumping in the air as if he had electrocuted it.  
The leap revealed the true nature of the striped rags. It was a small frilled lizard monster, female, probably about four or five years old, covered in scrapes and caked on dirt. Staring at him like she had just seen a ghost. Or a skeleton, he supposed.

“Oh my god! Y-y-you’re the Royal Scientist! Dr. Wingdings Gaster!” The lisp had turned his name into “Wingthings Gasther”. If her voice hadn’t been so shrill, he might’ve found that charming. She sure wasn’t being pitifully quiet any longer.

“Why, yes, I suppose I am.” She looked terrified. Maybe he should lay off the sarcasm a little. Floating in the sewage water was what she had been huddled over, a rapidly moistening glittery pink notebook and what looked like the remains of a human-made toaster over. He pointed at it. “Your book, little girl.” She broke eye contact with him only long enough to pick it up. At some point during that instant the fearful expression she wore turned to one of awe.

“Mr. Dr. Gaster, sir, I’m in l-l-love with your work! You’re the smartest guy in the whole Underground!” Did he have enough of a reputation that random filthy children at the dump knew about him? He had kind of assumed children were too busy worshipping that coot Gerson or playing skateboard to care about a boring old scientist and his boring old massive strides forward in advancing monsterkind. “You were the one who discovered the Barrier would need seven human souls to break! You reverse-engineered human electric systems so we could have power down here! You wrote like, every book about monster biology ever, even the ones from before the war! ‘Resonance Between Magic and Emotion Part V’ is my favorite.” 

Perhaps this specific filthy dump child was an outlier in his reputation amongst filthy dump children. He might even be a tiny bit impressed with the mucus-dripping little lizard cowering before him. That book was hardly ‘Fluffy Bunny’. 

“Always happy to meet a fan.” He had been Royal Scientist to the Underground for a thousand or so years, and could count on one hand the number of monsters who had even half this reaction to meeting him. This may admittedly have been his own fault, since he only ever left his laboratory to gather supplies at the dump, or share a cup of tea with Asgore. 

“What are you doing here at the dump by yourself, little girl? Besides tripping Royal Scientists, of course.” He eyed the soggy notebook she was now clinging to for dear life. She yelped and squeezed it even tighter.

“Oh, uh, it’s n-n-nothing important Mr. Dr. Gaster, sir. J-just a stupid l-l-little dumb t-thing.” Her voice dropped with every word she said, returning to the previously established ‘pitifully quiet’. “J-just like its w-w-writer.”

“Let me take a look at it, child. I’ll be the judge of that.” The frown she made at him revealed she had some serious orthodontal work in her future. At least he now knew she was the herbivorous variety of reptile, meaning she wasn’t likely to try and chomp off his femur. He still wasn’t going to completely eliminate the possibility, though. Children probably did things like that all the time, for no reason. Dreadful creatures.

“It’s uh, j-just some, schematics? F-for the s-s-stuff I find around here. Kinda useless, uh, uh, unless you want to m-make the same thing again? W-which I can’t do because I don’t have any t-t-tools or anything…” He spent exactly one half a second giving her the ‘stern adult’ look before she gasped and thrust the notebook towards him. He had a very good ‘stern adult’ look. It used to even work on Asgore for that short amount of time where he was taller than the king. Not that this little girl likely needed a stern adult of his magnitude to oblige him. A slightly grumpy Woshua would no doubt suffice at frightening her. Poor thing looked like she could use a meeting with a whole family of slightly grumpy Woshuas, to be honest. 

He opened the soggy book, careful not to rip the pages that were sticking together. The handwriting was nearly illegible to him, which was especially remarkable considering he could read and write in every skeleton dialect, many of which consisted of literal scribbles. The first page was some fluff about human technology being interesting and worthy of repurposing for monster use, which he assumed must be a foreword. Every page after it consisted of crude drawings of human machinery with diagrams and more of those chicken scratch notes that seemed to be theories on what the device or component did. Some pages had illustrations of human technology he had never seen before. One showed what looked like a CRT but instead of having a concave piece of glass for the screen, it had a flat piece. Another had a picture of what looked like a circle with a hole in the center of it. It was helpfully labeled ‘OPtiCaL STORaGE ^w^’, otherwise he would have assumed the little reptile girl had forgotten how to draw a pizza. Optical media storage, huh. Those humans were coming up with all sorts of ridiculous things.

He paused for a moment. The little reptile girl was having another coughing fit, but she was trying to look at him to see his response. The little reptile girl, the one who drew these technical drawings. The one who he had assumed was four or five years old. A four-year-old who was theorizing how optical storage would work. Despite being the most intelligent monster in the Underground, he was suddenly feeling like a total idiot.

“You made these drawings, little girl? And these observations?” She fidgeted nervously, grabbing at a loose piece of cloth on her shirt. Her little beady eyes were looking down.

“Y-yes sir, Mr. Dr. Gaster. I k-know I can’t draw too good, s-sorry. You can d-d-drop it back in the trash…”

“Drop it in the trash? Why would I do something like that? Child, these are incredible! Your parents must be so prou…” He got to experience his second moment of feeling like an idiot that day. He looked at the little reptile girl. The little reptile girl he had found alone, hunched over in a pool of knee-deep sewage, wearing rags, covered in dirt and scrapes. She was coughing again. Everything in him froze. “Why don’t I help you get home, child?” 

Best for him not to start by assuming things. Maybe she was just poor, or just had a long day of roughhousing with friends. While she had a cold. Children were dreadful little trash goblins, after all. She could theoretically get that dirty in an afternoon. He handed her back her notebook and pat her head. She didn’t jump this time, which was an improvement. “I bet your family is worried sick about you.”

“Oh, uh, y-yeah. My, uh, m-my family.” The sad way she said the world ‘family’ send a shiver up his spine. “Uh, t-thank you for reading my s-s-stupid b-book, Mr. Dr. Gaster, sir. I’m gonna, uh, g-go home now.”

She turned tail and ran from him, faster than he figured a little four year old lump of scales, rags, and mud could. Or she would have, had she not made it about fifteen Gaster-sized steps away and collapsed over in a fit of wheezing. He rushed over to her, his magical hands already springing to life to pick her up in the air and off the garbage mound she faceplanted into. She had one last good hacking cough while in his floating hands that seemed to temporarily clear her lungs out.

“Child, I think it would be best if I accompany you. I can even carry you with my magic if you would like.”

“Oh um, n-no, that’s ok. I c-c-can walk home b-by myself. You’re a b-big important s-scientist, y-you have better things to do than t-that…” She was technically correct. He should already be back at the lab, there were so many projects whose deadlines he was missing. He could easily just pat this dirty little child on the head, say “good luck” to her and go deal with the thousand odd experiments that needed his many hands on them, and the only people who would blame him for that decision would be Literally Everyone, and Also His Conscience. He could practically hear King Fluffybuns yelling at him from here: “Wingdings, you egghead! You can’t just leave a child who’s clearly got a nasty fungal infection in her lungs at the dump just because you have to water your space plants!” Only he supposed the king hadn’t written enough books on monster biology to recognize a pulmonary fungal infection from just the cough. He’d definitely call him an egghead though, that was Asgore’s default nickname for him.

“But wouldn’t you be delighted to show your family you met the famous Dr. Gaster?” She looked very conflicted. It was a good thing that she really didn’t have much say in the matter, since he was still holding her in the air with his extra hands. She cowered behind a large transparent thumb.

“Uh, I l-live in Hotland, on the l-left cliffs…” That wasn’t a terrible walk. He could be back at the lab in no time and put his nagging conscience to rest about helping this child.

 

It was a pile of rocks. Whatever had been there before was crushed in the avalanche. He’d read about it in the newspaper, now that he thought about it. Something about a rockslide in Hotland that killed five monsters.

“You live here, little gi-er, Alphys?” She clung to his leg. He was feeling something in the pit of his heart, an emotion that wasn’t detached superiority or sarcasm. It was strange and very unpleasant. He looked at the child beside him, but it wasn’t the dirty reptile girl standing there anymore. It was someone else, someone he knew as intimately as he knew himself, because it was himself. 

There he was, a young skeleton in his twenties, surveying the damage. The air was thick with dust and ash. Buildings toppled. The humans had killed them all, wiped them out without a second thought. They hadn’t even been soldiers, the village had been empty besides children and those too weak to fight. This had been the last skeleton monster holdout. And if this place, his home, had been decimated, that meant he was the last one. Not another skeleton alive anywhere in the entire world. All alone. 

…

This little girl was younger than he had been.

He considered psychology to be the most bullshit of the sciences, for the record. It was basically fortune telling. It was a pile of anecdotes masquerading as facts. Psychology said that he suffered survivor’s guilt. Psychology said he had post-traumatic stress disorder. That was moronic. You couldn’t measure guilt. There wasn’t a conjecture that stated how much trauma was needed before someone developed flashbacks. It was all just meaningless words.

Or maybe he just didn’t like what psychology had to say about his so-called lack of emotion. Repression. Sociopathy, maybe. Monsters were supposed to be made of compassion. He’d never been a fan of that theory. In a way, his life’s work was just the process of systematically destroying it. His three hundred odd books on the subject had taught him exactly what monsters were made of, and compassion just wasn’t on the list. Magic, sure. Bones, organs, and tissue, though those weren’t particularly required. A soul. Did that mean monsters could live without compassion, then? Even the old fairy stories admitted humans could. 

“I uh, I used to live there, b-but… I d-don’t live anywhere no more.” He scooped her into the air again, with his real hands this time. She was surprisingly heavy. He had no idea at what ages it stopped being socially acceptable to cradle tiny monsters in your arms like babies, but he hoped it was bigger than ‘roughly four or five’ and ‘a thousand and a half’, respectively.

“I am going to take you to my house.” He looked down at the poor creature now laying limply in his arms. She seemed to have exhausted her ability to protest for the day. “And you are going to get washed up, and then you are going to eat a big bowl of soup. Tomorrow I will give you a full medical examination and take you to the king.”

“Mr. Dr. Gaster, s-sir. Why are you being so n-n-nice to me?” Children were horrible, always asking questions instead of just being grateful. No, that wasn’t true, he prided inquisitiveness more than anything else. He just didn’t like the answer psychology was providing him yet again. If the little girl had not been a genius, if her family had just been poor instead of gone, he had no doubt he would be leaving her at this pile of rubble to sort out her own problems. He was only helping little Alphys because the monster he actually wanted to help was little Wingdings. He was proof monsters could live without compassion. 

“I’m going to answer your question with one of my own, little girl. Do you believe that even the worst person can change?” She looked at him like he had just told her that her hero in life was a sociopath. She was a very perceptive little thing. 

“Dr. Gaster, s-sir?” He wished she would stop calling him sir. He wasn’t a sir. He was a millennia-old baby bones who put on a lab coat and turned off his feelings so he could keep pushing forward. He would leave little girls to die of lung infections if it meant he didn’t have to get emotionally involved. “I uh, I h-hope so, or I’m in t-t-trouble. They d-died, and I didn’t. I w-want to be better so I can show them I’m sorry for b-being bad.” Tears welled up in the corners of her beady black eyes. She really was the spitting image of himself, or rather, himself a thousand and a half years ago. If left to her own devices, he feared she would become the spitting image of himself now. The Underground really didn’t need two sociopathic geniuses.

“Being alive is a positive thing. Nothing to feel sorry about.” He didn’t believe it even as he said it to her. Once you saw the amount of skeleton dust he did, how he got to live to be a thousand and a half and there were skeletons in their infancy in those piles of dust, how could you ever not be sorry? But being sorry was an emotion for Wingdings to sort out, and Wingdings was dead. It was just a little white lie to get a child to stop crying. He was fairly sure that was something everyone partook in. “Live on for them, child. It is all you can do.” There, now it was a little white lie with a Nice Moral attached. She smiled at him through the tears.

“I’ll t-try my best, Mr. Dr. Gaster.” 

 

_And live on for them she did, except in the thousands of resets where she did not. Sometimes lost to sickness or accident, but far, far more often lost to her own hand. It made Gaster cry to see it, to feel the agony of knowing his little girl fell to the demons that had nearly taken him. But what could he do here, now? He could only be a voyeur to his daughter’s self-destruction._

_And now she had taken the first steps down a path even darker, even more permanent. She wanted to save him, but how could he hope to save her?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter came out so fast because I've had most of it typed for a while now. The next one might be a while, sorry.
> 
> Gaster's feelings on psychology in this chapter do not mirror my own, obviously. Half of my fanfiction is just psychoanalysis character studies with a plot tacked on.


	5. A Nightmare and an Unsolicited Selfie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's less-edgy-than-usual theme is [ Too Tired to Wink by Ludo ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1WuqjkDAKU) I can't believe this band has a song called Skeletons on Parade and I'm not using it for a skelebros-centered chapter. I'm a hack, a fraud.
> 
> Content warning in this chapter for: Mentions of suicide, gaslighting, Papyrus angst, and minor One Piece spoilers (not a joke. partially a joke.)

Back in his undergraduate days, Sans had had this professor. The first day everyone had wandered into class to find the board was covered in basic algebra problems, solve for x stuff. Babybones work for a class of doctorate hopefuls. He had already pulled out a piece of paper to start writing the answers down, recognizing the surefire signs of bullshit before his classmates did. This professor was about to teach them A Lesson, and it was a better idea to begin by sucking up to them than question it. He knew he was going to be skipping class too much to be the wiseass. Whichever clown it was who played right into the professor’s wily jape, he both hated and respected. Damn humanities majors. Probably a psychology student, of course. “Why are you making us do this?” said the brain-dead psych major. “This is the kind of stuff you give to a remedial freshman.” And of course, the professor's eye lit up like it was Gyftmas early. “Tell me the quadratic formula.” said the professor to the poor sod. No one could recall it, of course, because that's the kind of information you store in the same place as ‘what's Papyrus’s favorite dinosaur?’, someplace where it's getting thrown the fuck out. (Iguanodon, he knew. Bad example.) The professor smiled, sure of themselves that A Lesson was about to be delivered. “This is why I have you do this work, so you will remember.”

The joke was on that professor, ultimately. Sans spent the rest of the semester in a drunken haze and couldn't tell you a damn thing about the class besides that cute little anecdote. He actually couldn't remember most of his time in college anymore. He laid on the floor of his sentry station, counting the grease stains where he’d dropped French fries some centuries ago. His dad had always told him to stay away from alcohol for this exact reason. Rots your brain, he had said. Dr. Gaster was a man who afforded himself few vices, and drinking was certainly not one of them. He rolled his father's name around in his head like it was a quadratic formula or a type of dinosaur. Wingdings Gaster, Dr. Wingdings Gaster. It was a ritual, the first thing he did when he woke up after a reset. Wingdings Gaster, biological father to two handsome skeleton boys, adopted father of one fine lizard girl. Then he’d try and say it aloud, the last vestige of hope he allowed himself anymore. And it would always die in his mouth, even as he strained and strained himself to make the words come out. Wingdings Gaster, Wingdings Gaster, Wing...nothing, as usual. Then he’d lay there and pretend to sleep, still counting those grease stains like he didn't know them better than he knew himself most resets.

“A man only truly dies when he is forgotten!” That was a quote from one of Alphys’s anime. It had a cool skeleton in it, too, looked a lot like Pap except with hair. If the anime was to be trusted, that meant he was the last person keeping their dad alive. A joke, a shitty fucking cruel joke, that the only one who could remember him was an alcoholic with a skull full to bursting with so much other crap. 

It would happen eventually, he’d forget him. An inevitability when you have a thousand lifetimes worth of memories piling up. And then what? Everything would carry on completely unchanged. The only difference is he would spend more time counting grease stains when he woke up from a reset. Or maybe he’d stop waking up entirely, his hope was as low as it gets already. His brother would just find him fallen down and have to lug his lazy idiot body back home and wait until he dusted. Good job, Sans. 

Heh, seeing him fallen down at the beginning of every reset might finally convince Frisk to stop resetting. Can't save everyone, kid, and trying just does this to you. Unfortunately, the thought would probably give him just barely enough hope to not fall down in the first place. Irony isn’t as good as puns, but it’s not bad comedy either. He squeezed his eye sockets tightly closed and laughed to himself. His brother would be coming to wake him up any moment now.

“WAKE UP, YOU LAZYBONES. IT’S MORNING.” Always on cue, like clockwork. In a world where nothing ever changed, it was the one thing he never got tired of. Those were always the first words Papyrus said to him when a reset occurred. They meant that his hands were clean again. The only places his sins crawled any longer were on his back and in his skull, places they couldn’t hurt anyone besides the lazy idiot who committed them in the first place. He couldn’t remember what he had been doing last reset, but it hardly mattered now. Frisk had seen to that. “YOUR SHIFT BEGAN TWO HOURS AGO AND SLEEPING ON THE JOB REFLECTS POORLY ON YOUR SENTRYING ABILITIES.”

“i’m not sleeping, i’m just making sure there’s no humans hiding underneath my sentry booth.” He opened his eyes to the comforting sight of a half-dozen empty ketchup bottles and his brother’s bright red galoshes. The only thing he could clearly remember was that he had been very, very drunk. He silently apologized to his brother for relapsing, even if he technically hadn’t anymore. After a moment of composing himself, he stood up and greeted him properly. Pap was staring at the snow with a very concerning look on his face. It wasn’t excited or indignant or any of the usual emotions he had on his face at this point of the timeline, but a sort of pouting Sans knew meant his bro was mulling over a difficult thought. “something eating you? bad dream?” A little half-joke. Papyrus didn’t sleep, everyone knew that. He was too busy doing whatever it is insomniacs do instead of sleep. Sans wouldn’t know, he was the most narcoleptic narcolept who ever dozed off standing up.

“YES, ACTUALLY.” He tried to keep the sudden rush of fear from crossing to his face. Had his brother had started being able to remember the resets? Was he carrying around the thought of finding his brother sprawled out after a bender, doing who knows what? 

He sat down on the corner of the sentry station, kicking his feet. And more concerningly, not talking. This was Brooding Papyrus, a man who had very little in common with Nagging Papyrus, the guy who came out when he saw his brother drink. Easy, Sans, he told himself, don’t go making a problem out of what is probably nothing. He could have very well decided to go to bed for once. What kind of nightmares would his brother even have? Something about Cooking With A Killer Robot being canceled, probably. Nothing serious. Still, Brooding Papyrus was a rare sight, and never one he was particularly happy to see.

“wanna talk about it?” Knowing him he would immediately deny everything and then dial the cheesy fake grin up to a thousand. It wasn’t exactly solving the problem, but it was hiding it enough that nobody had to think about it, which is almost as good. Or something. Look, no one was going to accuse Sans of being a good therapist, brother, or person in general. The fake smile never made its way to his face. This was Brooding Papyrus DEFCON 2, a critical pun emergency. “no hurry. maybe you should sleep on it, put the idea to res...”

“SANS, WHERE DID WE COME FROM?” It was a good thing Sans had a killer poker face, because it took everything in him not to curl inward in horror. This was a thousand times worse than remembering the resets. At least he could help him with that, offer him explanations and comfort. This was something he was physically incapable of answering for. Our dad, Pap, Wingdings Gaster. Inside his head, but never out of his mouth.

“that’s a pretty heavy religious question to be askin me right when i wake up, bro.” He hoped being obtuse would annoy him enough that the topic would get dropped, even as he knew better. Brooding Papyrus was one determined monster. 

“I’VE NEVER SEEN A SKELETON BESIDES US ANYWHERE.” Epic sidestepping maneuver, Pap.

“i slept through history class and even i can tell you skeletons went extinct during the war.” Deflection, with just a hint of self-deprecation. A brilliantly crafted conversation ender. Would he take the bait, or would he press on?

“YES, I KNOW THAT, BUT…” He was pacing now, that serious brooding face sharper than ever. “BUT THERE’S US. MOST MONSTERS HAVE PARENTS, AND IT DOESN’T SEEM LIKE WE DO.” 

“it’s called being an orphan, pap. means our family’s gone.” Their family was gone, so that wasn’t a lie. Or, a quarter of it was. And the other quarter he’d be much happier if he never saw again. Considering her penchant for suicide, he might just get his wish.

“UGH, I KNOW WHAT AN ORPHAN IS. BUT I DON’T THINK WE’RE ORPHANS. THERE’S A BIG BOOK IN THE LIBRARBY THAT HAS THESE THINGS CALLED BIRTH RECORDS. I CHECKED, AND DOUBLE CHECKED, AND THEN I ASKED THE NICE LIBRARIAN LADY TO HELP CHECK WITH ME. WE’RE NOT IN THERE.” Great, now more prying eyes were going to start asking questions without answers. By the time the human showed up to start dusting everyone, all Snowdin would be gossiping about the skeletons with no history. Pap had a tough enough time trying to make friends without any weird rumors floating around. Welp, now he was going to have to clean up this problem before the Ruins’ door opened.  
“yeah, weird. anyway, i gotta go. it’s my quarter half hour break and grillby’s probably wondering what’s taking me so long.” He’d order a nice, stiff drink. Or two. Or twenty. Get this off his mind. Maybe threaten a few gossiping patrons with a Bad Time when he was drunk enough to use it as an excuse.

…Nah. Frisk hadn’t even shown up yet, this could still be a nice reset. No drinking, just a burger and a longing stare at the liquor shelf. The kid would probably reset again immediately if they noticed he was drunk, anyway, supposing they weren’t feeling murder-y.

“THIS DOESN’T BOTHER YOU AT ALL?” He threw his hands on Sans’s shoulders, body blocking him from taking a shortcut to sweet, greasy freedom.

“nope. we got each other, isn’t that all we need?” The words stung to say even if he’d said it a thousand times to a thousand prying monsters before. It was a horrible betrayal of a wonderful man, someone who’d literally torn himself in half for his boys. It also wasn’t even true, if his own failure to keep his shit together was anything to go by.

“I USED TO FEEL THAT WAY. JUST US, THE GREAT PAPYRUS AND THE SLIGHTLY ABOVE AVERAGE SANS, AGANST THE WORLD.” Man, ‘slightly above average’ was a way better accolade than the weak-ass ‘PhD’ he used to pad his resume with. His bro was the coolest. Pap’s voice dropped. “But now I’m feeling quite conflicted.” 

Oh no, he was speaking in lower cases. This wasn’t Brooding Papyrus, it was something else entirely. There were a lot of things Sans could ignore, brush off, or drown in alcohol, but his brother switching to proper syntax was not one of them. It meant he was seconds from becoming Earnestly Crying Papyrus, a monster Sans had only seen once or twice. And those times had been in resets where he had been in the process of dusting himself.

“bro?”

“LAST NIGHT I HAD A DREAM ABOUT A PECULIAR MAN. HE WAS TALL, SO I COULDN’T SEE HIS FACE. BUT I SAW HIS HANDS.” He looked at his own hands as if they belonged to a stranger. Maybe he’d get those drinks after all, it was well past too late to be a good reset. “THEY HAD THESE BIG HOLES IN THE MIDDLE OF THEM, BUT THEY WERE BONES JUST LIKE OUR HANDS. HE WAS SAD. Very sad.” Another grating syntax slip, and this one came with fat tears. All Sans could do was stare as his worst nightmare unfolded before him. What could he do for him? He couldn’t give him answers, and comfort was a thing he’d become too jaded for a thousand resets ago.

“bro, don’t…”

“WE HAD A NICE TALK. HE CRIED A WHOLE BUNCH, BUT HE KEPT SAYING HOW GREAT I WAS. HE SAID IN A FAMILY WITH THREE DOCTORATES, IT WAS THE ONLY MONSTER WITHOUT ONE THAT HAD ANY COMMON SENSE. I AGREED, EVEN THOUGH HIS COUNTING WAS OFF BY TWO.” He smiled, and then it vanished back to the forlorn face that looked so wrong on such a bubbly monster. “HE STARTED CRYING AGAIN WHEN I SAID THAT. WHAT A WEIRD GUY.”

“yeah, crazy dream. you probably shouldn’t fall asleep watching those horrible shakespeare plays mtt puts on anymore.”

“IT FELT SO REAL. HE WAS- HE WAS REALLY HURTING. CRYING SO BAD I COULD BARELY UNDERSTAND HIM AND TELLING ME HE LOVED ME, AND HE WAS SORRY. LIKE THE WAY YOU DO SOMETIMES WHEN YOU THINK I CAN’T HEAR YOU.” Yes, he was going to get very drunk the moment his brother let go of his arms, and to hell with Frisk or resets or anything. None of it mattered anyway.

“it’s just a nightmare, pap.” He heard his voice quiver ever so slightly. 

“BUT, HE…” 

“just a nightmare.” He dropped the pupils from his sockets and stared him in the eye. Shut him down the only way he knew how to deal with problems anymore, with threats. Disgusting. “now forget about it.” 

There was a pregnant pause where Papyrus attempted to process what had just happened to them. If only he knew how little the monster he woke up minutes ago had in common with the Sans he had known until then. Then he pulled away, throwing his hands on his hips and tutting to himself. Finally, his fragile ego had won the battle against his curiosity, and it had only taken an act of cruelty to do so.

“YOUR CRACK LOOKS VERY WIDE TODAY. MAYBE YOU SHOULD GO HOME AND REST.” His what?

“you mean my ass, or...?” Skeletons don’t even have ass cracks, what a lousy joke. Still, he definitely owed his brother a laugh or two after that. Also, since when did Papyrus tell him to go rest?

He raised a gloved hand to his own skull and pointed above his left eye socket. Sans rubbed where his brother had been pointing. Sure enough, he felt a very deep crack in his skull. He was about to get a better look at it in some ice when his phone buzzed, an anime girl going “kyaa!”. That was his alert for texts sent by Alphys, she’d picked it out herself back when they could stand to talk to each other. He never had the heart to change it. Also, he was too lazy.

In a strictly linear fashion, there was no good reason at all for her to be texting him. They hadn’t spoken in years, a very intentional and very necessary move on his part. What would she possibly have to say to him…? He touched the crack on his skull again.

Last reset he had been in the true lab with her, he remembered hazily. He’d been too drunk to read something to her, then he had crawled on to an operating table. And then he died. What could have killed him, besides her? Wait, the crack! His dad had two of those cracks on his face, one down his right side and one up his left. They were scars from where he had cut into his soul, physical reminders of the sacrifice that he made for his boys. And now he had one. And now Alphys was texting him, completely out of the blue as far as linearity was concerned.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened the message. It was an image file, a selfie. Alphys never sent selfies. She hated looking at herself. Of course, the monster in the picture wasn’t her. Because the monster who had texted him from her number wasn’t her. Obviously. Because Alphys did not have a skull for a head.

What did he do when he was drunk, exactly?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentines Day! Hope you wanted some skeleton angst that only barely advances the plot forward!
> 
> Wonder what Alphys has been up to while we're seeing what's going on in the skull of Sans...


	6. A Craving for Tomatoes and a Cup of Tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No edgy theme song for this chapter, so I'm just going to recommend [ Black Sun by Death Cab for Cutie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVrfEBDNFWQ) as it's what was on loop while I was writing this chapter. It's also somewhat thematic here, I guess? 
> 
> Content warning in this chapter for: More increasingly dubious incestuous relationship discussions, and...that's actually it. This is a pretty mild chapter by my standards.

Alphys’s first thoughts upon slowly regaining consciousness were ‘Is that Undyne playing piano I hear?’ followed immediately after by an immense, inexplicable craving for tomatoes. Vegetable pining aside it was certainly Undyne playing, she could hear the extra-hard twang of keys and an accompanying low growl when she would hit a wrong note. The song was a cheery waltz from an anime game, one of her favorites. Undyne had even convinced her to dance with her to it once. She laid still for a while, not wanting to leave the reverie of hearing her girlfriend’s beautiful music. 

She had a pretty bad craving for hard liquor, too, now that she thought about it, a low ache that drew her mind away from the song. It was a very strange feeling for her, considering how much she hated drinking. She’d had a sip of tequila just yesterday, she remembered, and it had been as nasty as it always was. Was it yesterday that happened? It felt like so much longer ago. Why had she been drinking in the first place? She had gone to visit Sans. And then… All the memories suddenly came rushing back to her. 

“Undyne!” She scrambled upright, eyes darting around her surroundings in shock. She was sitting on the couch in Undyne’s underground home. Undyne herself was staring at her with confusion, her fingers still hovering over the piano’s keys.

“Oh hey, you’re awake!” Undyne had a big, bright toothy smile on her face that almost made Alphys forget the problem with the situation. Luckily, it was a pretty obvious problem.  
“Uh, how am I h-here? D-didn’t your old house, uh, burn down?” She leered over the back of the piano with a face that said she had no idea what Alphys was talking about. Which, while confusing, would have to wait for now, because she had a much more pressing thing to attend to, and that was trying to make up for the idiotic stunt she’d just tried to pull with Sans’s soul. 

“I’m s-sorry, I should have listened to you. It didn’t work, and now he’s gone and I love you more than anything but you probably hate me and-!” Undyne interjected, halting her anxious verbal spiral.

“What.” Her voice was blunt and harsh, the way she gave orders she knew her guards weren’t going to like very much. “Did you just say you love me?”

Hearing Undyne ask that with so much apprehension made her arms go limp. She didn’t think she loved her anymore? Of course, she’d chosen to trust the word of a self-destructive liar over her own girlfriend’s very valid concerns. And it hadn’t even achieved anything, Sans was still dust and whatever good that piece of his soul could have done was gone now.

“I uh, the t-thing between me and Sans… It wasn’t anything. Only one t-time, just a mistake. I just- I just wanted to be his friend again, like we used to be…” The thought of that hollow look in his eye sockets forced a shudder out of her. All those horrible secrets he couldn’t share with anyone that died unspoken when he did. “But you’re e-everything to me. And he’s at peace now, we can scatter his dust at that s-stupid bar he loves and we’ll l-live on together for him. I-if you don’t hate me, I guess…” She tried not to meet Undyne’s eyes, keeping hers on the floor.

“Sans isn’t…” She could swear she just heard Undyne choke back a sob, but she was too cowardly to look at her. The piano spit out two absentminded notes. “Does he know?”

“He’s g-gone, what does it matter? He can’t be my friend, or anything else, n-not anymore…” This seemed like the wrong answer, judging by the sound of slamming piano keys she received in response.

“Sans isn’t dead! I saw his lazy ass sleeping at his sentry post just this morning!” One final, probably piano-destroying slam, proceeded by the rapid stomping of Undyne approaching her. It was going to be much harder to not meet Undyne’s gaze now that she was in the process of picking her up. “He’s about as useful as dust most days, but he’s unfortunately very much alive! Who cares about him, do you really mean it that you love me?”

At his sentry post, alive? And she had woken up on a couch that should be cinders in a house that should be abandoned, if not a pile of charred rubble. That finally settled her doubts; Sans had been telling the truth about those resets.

But if they were back underground, that meant she hadn’t yet confessed her feelings to Undyne. She had a fresh chance to come clean about everything, to start becoming a person worth being loved. The sheer potential to fix all of her mistakes put a big smile wide across her face. Best of all, she was going to get to share the nicest of her secrets immediately!

“Y-yes! I love every moment I get to spend with you! I want to smother you in a thousand kisses! You’re so strong and confident and beautiful and I, uh I…” She hesitated. Undyne was not smiling back at her. Her teeth were curled out in a menacing scowl.

“You’re in love with me.”

“Y-yes?” She lowered her to the ground with a quietly seething unrest in her movements. Jerky, unpredictable, wild. There was murder in her eye.

“That’s great. Just fucking great. Yeah, I’m in love with you too.” She spat the words like they were a curse. “You’re only the smartest, strongest, humblest monster in the entire underground, how could I not be? But you’re his. That fucking jerk. Can’t do his job worth a shit and he took my chance with you while he was at it.” Alphys berated herself again for being such an idiot. She just confessed her love right after talking about a fling with someone else. Even if she’d swore it wasn’t anything, it also wasn’t right.

“J-just a mistake, he was j-just…” 

If the fish monster had been uneasy before, she was furious now. She summoned up an energy spear and flung it at the shattered remains of her piano. Four more followed it, punctuating each of her next screamed words. “He’s! Your! Fucking! Fiancé! Was that ‘just a mistake’?” Alphys didn’t even have time to try and figure that out. The impotent rage consuming Undnye had her scared shitless. She threw spear after spear into the floor with complete abandon. “I put those feelings the fuck away when I realized I didn’t have a goddamn chance with you, Alphy. But you skeletons, all the fucking same, I swear. Don’t tell me what’s going on with you until it’s too late.” 

She huffed and dissipated her spears; her temper clearly having become dulled enough that she wasn’t in murder-mode. This gave the scientist enough mental respite to think things over.

“T-this isn’t right, n-not any of it.” Alphys scratched at her skull forlornly. Her…skull? She couldn’t feel any scales on her face for her to pick at. It felt too smooth, like someone had buffed out all the bumps on it and put on a thick coat of polish. Undyne had just said “You skeletons are all alike” to her. She glanced down at her tail. Instead of being fat and fleshy, it now hung below her in a necklace chain of vertebrae. 

“I’m, uh, I’m a skeleton.” The realization didn’t hit her as hard as learning about the resets, for some reason. It didn’t seem like something she should be emotionally invested in, like it was some piece of information she had always known. Her name was Alphys, she was short, she liked anime and junk food, and she was a skeleton. In this new messed up world where she was apparently engaged to her adopted brother, it was just a simple and logical fact. “Undyne, I have n-no idea what’s going on. Can y-you please be patient with me?”

Undyne was not a monster with a lot of patience. She was, in fact, the poster child for blind, reckless haste. It was both her best and worst trait. She could give orders under pressure, never hesitated when there were people depending on her, and always had a solution readily available, even if that solution consisted mostly of suplexing the problem.  
Despite both acting and looking like she was all yelling and teeth and spears, Undyne could be surprisingly tender. Still, there was only one monster who ever got to see her gentler side. Luckily for Alphys, it just so happened to be the bony loser currently requesting it.

She walked to the kitchen, pulling down a box of golden tea from the cabinets.

“You’re having second thoughts. I’ve never been married, because duh, but I bet it’s stressful.” Alphys remembered Sans had told her that she and Undyne had gotten married in some resets. Had it been stressful? She could only ever imagine how nice it must have been to promise her soul to someone who understood her as well as she did. Always reassuring her that she was amazing, even if she felt like the lowest scum most of the time. “Especially being engaged to that clown! I bet his room looks like, uh, like yours, actually.” 

The teapot whistled. Undyne pulled out two mugs, her own fish mug and one with a happy little cartoon skull on it.

“You guys better hire Pap as a maid, or nobody’s gonna be able to get in your house with all the junk piled up.” Memories of the squalor Sans had been sitting in when she’d found him holed up in the cabin last reset flashed in her mind. Sitting in a ‘depression nest’, as Papyrus would say. She couldn’t save him from that, skeleton or not. Not when she was roosting in her own depression nest most of the time.

“I-I can’t be with him. You’re-“ Undyne cut her off, shoving the skull mug into her claws.

“Pap tells me you make him smile. Like, real smiles, not that creepy shit he’s always got on his face. And I’ve seen the way your face lights up when you’re around him, too. You’re two dork peas in a nerd pod.” She gulped down her own tea, not bothered one bit by the scalding heat. “You’ll be great together. I’m not going to be selfish and get between that, even if that’s what you think you want right now. That’s a promise!”

“Y-you don’t understand, I-he’s my…” The word ‘brother’ died on her mouth. She wasn’t sure if it was whatever paradox-preventing force kept her from talking about Gaster, or if it was her own cowardice.

“I mean this with all the friendly goodness in my soul, Alphy, but if you’ve got relationship problems I’m not the monster you should be talking to. Talk to him about it. I’ll try to support you, but it’s something for you two to sort out.” She stuck her hand into the pocket of Alphy’s lab coat and produced her cell phone. She held it in her outstretched palm, a command more than it was a friendly suggestion. “Call him.”

That was probably for the best, at the moment. Not for the reasons Undyne wanted her to talk to him, but he was likely to be the only person who could make any sense of what was going on. She took a long sip of her tea and took her phone. 

Her phone wallpaper was a picture of him with one arm wrapped around a strange half-lizard, half-bone construct looking monster. That was probably her, huh. She wasn’t too fond of the new look, not that she’d ever been too fond of her own appearance to begin with. It was a disturbing picture for several reasons, the worst of them not even related to how she no longer had skin on her face or tail.

She hovered her claw over the contact on her phone lovingly labeled “BoNE DAddY ^3^’ and immediately felt the chest-tightening onset of a panic attack. Nope, not going to do that. Instead, she opened her messenger app. A picture’s worth a thousand words, anyway, and she only had about a billion questions. It was the first selfie she’d taken in…possibly ever, but for her first it definitely captured the exact mood she was going for. Which was, of course, ‘Help I’m a skeleton and also your fiancée for some reason, please explain.’ 

…He was totally going to reply with nothing but a shitty joke, wasn’t he? 

Barely a second later, her phone produced the punchline-signifying incidental trombone note that meant Sans had just sent her a text. It made both her and Undyne jump with its sudden loudness.

‘lookin sansome today al. i c ur takin ur calcium.’ She was going to murder him. Her phone trombone-d again. ‘u remember what we were doin last reset? i was v busy tryin tequila skeleton but i’m p sure i gave u some of my soul’ 

Undyne peeked over her shoulder at the messages. “Eww, I didn’t want to know about that!” She blushed but tried her best to ignore the prying eyeball on her phone. Nervous claws typed up a message.

‘guess I did the surgery right then? happy but also weird you’re not dust anymore \o/’ 

‘u get used to it anyway i gtg frisks here dont do nothin 2 paradoxy act natural’

‘OwO wtf do you mean by that’

There was no reply. Instead, her phone buzzed with a very different alert sound. An alarm, one she had only heard once before in her life. One that signified a human had just emerged from the Ruins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ I did this wonderful MS Paint doodle of what Skele!Alphys looks like, in case you're wondering. ](https://i.imgur.com/5pT7hOP.png)
> 
>  
> 
> I have like, literally no idea at all how long it's going to be on the next chapter. I had very rough outlines of the plot up until this point and I still have like some clue what I'm wanting to do next, but it's much vaguer. Sorry if it's a long time. 
> 
> Also, I'm on the look for a beta reader! We'd be communicating over Discord, and I'd be more than happy to beta your stuff in return!


	7. A Piercing Stare and a Crushed Cell Phone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edgy theme music for this chapter is [ AaAaAaAAaAaAAa by Nashimoto-P ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uzoHItNNTA) Bet you weren't expecting edgy weeb music, were you?
> 
> Content warning in this chapter for: Suicide mention and general genocide route-related naughtiness. I know my normal writing isn't exactly sunshine and kittens, but this chapter is especially grimdark.

The kid was dusty as hell, those red eyes full of murderous intent peeking out from underneath their dirty mess of hair. Yep, his intuition had been right on the money, this was going to be a bad reset. 

Sans hated when his intuition was correct. It never had anything nice to say.

He gave his usual spiel to them about pretending to be human for his brother’s sake. It was a tired joke, but then again, he was a very tired guy. No sense in trying to talk reason into someone who would be killing everything he held dear soon. They obviously weren’t listening to him, anyway. They were staring at the new crack in his skull.

“hey. i know you’re just itchin to get your stab on, but i’m throwin my best material at you. least you could do is smile, or emote, or something.”

They pointed their toy knife at the crack, completely unflinching in their stare and posture. He laughed. It was kind of hilarious that they thought they could scare him into doing anything. Even knowing what they’d done and what they were capable of, it was pretty hard to be frightened of a kid waving a plastic toy around. Doubly so when nothing they could threaten him with he hadn’t already seen a thousand times before. What were they going to do, kill him? Kill his brother? Kill everyone? What a joke.

“heh, wouldn’t you like to know, pal. sadly, my lips are sealed, and not just ‘cause i don’t have any.” They lowered the blade. “maybe i’ll tell you if you keep my bro alive this run. maybe i won’t.” 

Fat chance, that murder-stare was a sign they wouldn’t be satisfied until half of the Underground was empty. Papyrus was already as good as dust, and so was everyone else. Including himself, but it was best not to dwell on that kind of thinking just yet.

The anomaly shot him one more menacing glance before walking past him like he wasn’t even there. No manners at all on that little murderer, it was no wonder they and Toriel didn’t get along.

Papyrus made his appearance. They ignored his puzzles, his japes, his spaghetti, his attempts at friendship, like always. Like always, they got dustier and dustier every time Sans saw them, their LOVE steadily growing to match. They pointed their knife at his crack every time they locked eyes with him. He continued to shrug them off, even as their LOVE made his eye sockets involuntarily water at the sight of them. Papyrus noticed, but he was too caught up in his usual antics to care.

He finally said something about it on the bridge to Snowdin Town. Just a little too late, sadly. 

“HUMAN, YOUR SINGLE-MINDED FOCUS ON MY BROTHER’S SKULL IS VERY CONCERNING.” 

“yeah, kid. my bro’s the handsome one, not me.” They turned their knife from pointing at Sans’s skull to Papyrus’s. Papyrus yelped in delight, too naively optimistic to realize they were threatening his life.

“WOWIE, FINALLY SOME INTEREST IN THE RIGHT SKELETON! I’M NOT SURE WHY IT’S KNIFE-BASED, THOUGH. YOU HUMANS ARE VERY STRANGE.”

“they just think it’s knife to meet you, bro.” If looks could kill, Sans would’ve turned to dust under the scrutiny of those bloody red eyes. He winked at them, giving a flash of his blue magic pupil. “maybe you should ask pap out on a date before you do something you’re gonna regret.”

They curled their mouth up into a nasty little smile that screamed ‘the only date I have planned for your brother is an expiration date’. Oh well, so much for that.

“SANS, I CAN’T DATE THE HUMAN. I HAVE TO CAPTURE THEM!” 

Sans shrugged, as much to the human as to his brother. He was already mentally preparing himself for finding a dusty scarf in the snow. Nothing could be done to save him now. Papyrus had never listened to him any reset before, not even when he begged him to evacuate with the rest of Snowdin Town with tears streaming down his eye sockets some thousand resets ago, all the way back when he could actually feel something besides eternal emptiness. He was so sure he could stop them, that there was a soul somewhere in that dusty anomaly pretending to be human he could sway to goodness. 

Part of Sans wished he could have that kind of faith in anyone anymore. The other part wished himself dead.

The anomaly crossed the bridge into town silently. Papyrus turned to follow them but froze, staring at the trail of footprints they left in the snow.

“SANS, I…” This part was always the hardest, saying goodbye.

“the human’s gettin away. better hurry up or they’ll give ya the slip.” Papyrus didn’t move. Sans silently begged him to go, to just get it over with. Every second he kept standing there was like another stab through the soul.

“THE STRANGE MAN I HAD A DREAM ABOUT LAST NIGHT. DO I KNOW HIM?”

“no pap, you don’t.” He looked at his brother, seeing only the dusty scarf he was about to become. It wouldn’t hurt to give him something to hope for in his final moments, even if it was only a stupid empty hope. “but someday you might.”

“SOMEDAY,” His brother’s voice was so full of energetic optimism. Sans nodded grimly, immediately regretting his decision to say anything. “AND WE WILL BE GREAT FRIENDS!”

“closer than friends even, bro. almost like family.” 

“LIKE A FAMILY!” He turned away from the footprints leading into town, ran over to him and scooped him up in the air like he was a sack of potatoes. Sans hung limply in his brother’s embrace, hating himself more with every second. “…BUT NOT TODAY.”

“no, not today.” ‘Today you’re going to die’, he thought to himself. ‘Today we’re all going to die.’ “you’ve got a human to capture today.” 

“I AM SURE THIS WILL GO VERY WELL, AND I WILL INDEED CAPTURE A HUMAN AND BE SHOWERED IN KISSES EVERY DAY. BUT IF I’M WRONG…” Sans hugged him tight, reminding himself that this wasn’t goodbye forever, that Frisk would take control again and reset and he’d be on the surface and everything would be ok. It didn’t work. It never worked. He’d gotten very good at faking it, at least. His voice didn’t quiver anymore, his eye sockets didn’t leak.

“nah, you’re not wrong. go get ‘em.” He hated himself. His last words to his brother were always a lie.

Papyrus gently lowered him to the ground, posed with all the dramatic flair a lifetime of watching Mettaton on TV could teach him, and proudly marched into town to die. Sans watched him walk away until all he could see was the bright red streaks of his scarf and boots, and then the blizzard swallowed him up.

He shortcutted himself into Grillby’s. With the whole town either evacuated or dust, all the alcohol was free. It was the best part of these kinds of resets. No brother anymore to disappoint with his relapse, and no concerned bartender to get in between himself and the sweet embrace of total intoxication.

“that’s me, sans the optimist. my glass is always half-full. unless it’s booze, then it better be all full.” Nobody was there to laugh at his joke, what with them all being dead, so he laughed at himself. The sound echoed around the usually-bustling pub, making him very aware of how alone he really was. He pulled a random bottle off the liquor shelf and poured himself a shot. “this one’s for you, doggo. i hope they let you smoke dog treats in heaven.” This was another one of his ‘traditions’ in resets where everyone gets dusted, raising toasts to the dead that only the dead would hear. Not that they’d stay dead forever, but hey, any excuse to get hammered. He drank his shot and poured another. 

“and for you, tori. you should really learn to pre-screen your adopted kids for homicidal tendencies.” He laughed, drank, and filled the glass again. At one time he loved her; he’d tried to settle down start a family with her. Frisk had even called him ‘dad’ a few times. Nice memories, even if it didn’t last. Now even in good resets he stayed far away from Toriel. He couldn’t face her anymore knowing how many times her child’s blood had soaked his hands. Not Frisk, maybe, but somebody who wore their skin around. Still Frisk’s blood staining his hands then, technicalities be damned. 

He raised his glass in the air, remembering someone else he once loved.

“and this one’s to you, al. here’s hoping you don’t kill yourself once i’m dead and you’re stuck being queen.” 

The first time he found her dust, he’d been completely shattered with grief and guilt. He blamed himself for leaving her alone with their father’s notes and machines and the crushing pressure to break the Barrier. The second time he never made it out of the true lab himself, his own dust joining hers as a self-inflicted punishment for failing to save her yet again. The third time he went to Undyne with her suicide note clutched tight in his hand. It had seemed like the right thing to do, but he quickly found out it really wasn’t when he saw the self-loathing he only ever saw in himself reflected in her eye. By the fourth time he’d taken to quietly cleaning up after her, caring for creatures she left behind until someone else found them. He told everyone who asked that he hadn’t seen her. Which was not exactly a lie, it just so happened by the time he got to her there wasn’t any of her left to see.

Eventually, he grew numb to it. What she did to herself wasn’t his problem. It sucked, sure, but it wasn’t like he could stop her, not when he couldn’t even save the monsters who were just being regular old murdered. Suicides were well out of his authority.

Or was that just his excuse for being lazy? He choked down the shot and poured another. 

“two for you, al, just to prove i care. here’s hoping the little murder freak doesn’t torture you into tellin them how you got your boney makeover.” If things were going according to the usual flow, she had seen everything on her security cameras and was prepping the true lab for refugees from Waterfall and Hotland. 

Of course, things weren’t going according to the usual flow. He usually didn’t have a fractured skull. She usually didn’t have memories of a gentle human who looked exactly like Frisk making friends with everyone. She was going to foolishly trust the anomaly to not kill her.

She was going to wind up like Papyrus, leaving the Underground without a queen. Was that enough to be a dangerous, reality-ending paradox? It wasn't exactly the kind of thing he wanted to chance.

He pulled out his phone. She’d sent him ten texts, twenty-two Undernet alerts, and one voicemail. He marveled at the idea of Alphys, of all monsters, leaving him a voicemail. She must have been very desperate, especially if she had managed to sit through his fifteen-minute-long answering machine message where he read the ingredients list for MTT brand glitter spaghetti sauce. He played back the message.

“S-Sans! Answer your phone, for heaven’s sake! Undyne just t-told me something very concerning. We’re uh, we’re engaged? Uh, I mean you and I are, not me and her. That other one would be fine, and n-not concerning! That’s not how this universe-hopping thing is supposed to work, r-right? The only difference should be my uh, my lack of skin. I s-shouldn’t be… She’s pretty mad.” There was a good ten seconds of silence, during which Sans had abandoned the shot glass and just starting chugging straight from the bottle. Engaged to his sister who he now also shared half a soul with, why did this always happen to him? He half-wondered why Papyrus hadn’t mentioned it, before deciding he didn’t want the answer to that question.

“Uh, I’m n-not sure what counts as causing a p-p-paradox. I’m at my lab, because uh, I c-can’t cause a paradox if I’m doing what I always do, right? I’m gonna p-put on some anime and w-wait for Frisk to get here, but if you need me doing something else just talk me! Maybe do that anyway, b-because I could really use someone to talk to right now...” There was a thudding that sounded suspiciously like a clumsy lizard dropping her phone to the ground. “Oh my god, did F-Frisk just stab Chilldrake? He’s- he’s-!” The voicemail ended abruptly, punctuated by the sound of crunching plastic.

He tried to call her. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t make it to the second ring before informing him her phone was out of service. Now he was faced with a very difficult dilemma. Should he go visit her in the lab and try to set the flow of events straight, risking a paradox with his too-early presence there? Or should he let this play out how the anomaly would want it to play out, risking them finding out about what he and Alphys were trying to accomplish?

He looked at the bottle in his hands.

“one last shot to you, al. here’s hoping you can figure out how your g-blasters work on your own.” 

He wondered how much LOVE shattering a half-skeleton half-lizard soul would give the anomaly as he chugged the bottle down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I get stuck writing, my new method of getting unstuck is writing an Angsty Sans Chapter. It's a flawless strategy. Totally flawless. Not lazy at all.
> 
> ...Still looking for a beta reader!


	8. Two Books and a Shonen Protagonist

Alphys's claws raced through the pages of the scientific journal that had published Sans's thesis all those years ago. The whole thing had been about paradoxes and universe death. While it was a completely different field than hers, surely she could follow enough of it to learn how to not accidentally end reality. And how hard could it be, learning advanced quantum physics in the amount of time it takes a kid to traverse Waterfall? 

Ha, Sans would have appreciated that kind of gallows humor.

She looked hopelessly at the other book she had grabbed. Osteo-Arcania, the book her father had written on skeleton monsters that she could no longer remember a single word of in spite of the fact she currently was a skeleton. Or part skeleton, at least. Biology was at least something she knew enough about to understand the concepts; her stint with Determination research had forced her to learn rather quickly. It wouldn’t hurt to look through it and learn about her newfound strength. Maybe she could even help people once she figured out how to harness stuff like that ‘shortcut’ power Sans had used. She could get everyone to safety and then talk Frisk out of whatever was making them start killing people. They were always very easy to talk to, even for someone like her. Too sweet and gentle for their own good, very unlike far too many humans she had met on the surface. It must have been an accident or misunderstanding that made them turn that toy knife on her friends.

The memory of Chilldrake wheezing horribly as he fell to dust made her cringe hard enough to drop the book on her toes. Her eyes darted back to the scientific journal. The possibility of causing a paradox was still an impassable roadblock. It wouldn’t matter who she could save if it wiped out the universe in the process. Back to that thesis, then.   
“At any given moment, an infinite number of paths for reality to split off into are formed. These branches are parallel universes, isolated and unreachable as far as our current understanding of physics is concerned. Though there are an infinite number of parallel universes, not all universes are created equal. Universes that branch off as a result of physical impossibilities (referred to in this paper as paradoxes for simplicity’s sake), are considered ‘unstable’ universes. All universes can safely contain small paradoxes. It is only when the paradoxes begin to infringe on the core ‘rules’ of reality that dangerous levels of instability are reached. When too large a paradox occurs, the unstable universe will cease to exist and disappears from all known multiverse models.” 

His summary didn’t contain a single pun. She was proud of his professionalism. Nothing in it mentioned what constituted a dangerous paradox, though. She was going to have to dig into the meat of his research. She wished that he was there to explain it to her instead. Making all his quantum physics stuff simple enough for the laymonster to understand while sneaking in a crappy joke or two was one of his talents. She had always admired that about him.   
Back when they had been friends.

No, no time for that kind of thinking. She caught movement on her security camera. It was the cavern connecting Waterfall and Snowdin, shiny polished steel and a swish of red hair. Undyne, waiting for Papyrus to give her a status report. Except she had a sinking feeling he wouldn’t be showing up to report to her. Her claws ran down her skull like they could dig the thought from her mind. That was ridiculous, whatever misunderstanding led to Frisk killing those monsters would never extend to Pap, he was the nicest and gentlest monster around. He and Frisk had been practically inseparable, even with the memories of the past year erased from his mind it would only be a matter of time before they were up to their usual japes. Except…

The sinking feeling wasn’t going away. On the monitor, Undyne tapped her boot impatiently in the mud. Panic seized her. In all the time she’d even known him, Papyrus had never, ever been late, least of all to a meeting with Undyne.

He couldn’t be, Frisk wouldn’t. This was a kid who cried for hours when they accidentally stepped on a bug. Then again, this was a kid who would never run half the population of Snowdin through with a knife over a misunderstanding. 

Her computer bleeped, making her jump a foot in the air. It was an Undernet message from an anonymous poster. “dont do nythin stupid al. stay away from anomaly if u can and DO NOT talk to em. g blasters real dangery dont use. sry if u die. frisk will reset dw.”

Thanks, Sans. “sry if u die.” Unbelievable. She couldn’t even reply to his message since it was from an unregistered account. How much was this universe’s original Alphys able to put up with that she wanted to marry the infuriating bonehead too lazy to register an Undernet account when relaying universe-saving information? And “stay away from anomaly”. Did he mean the human, were they somehow not Frisk but looked exactly like them? 

Undyne had left her and Papyrus’s meeting spot while she had been reading the message. In her place a dusty human glared directly at the lens of the hidden camera. Seeing them that closely, it was obvious that it was not Frisk. That creature, that “anomaly”, as Sans had called it, had no soul behind its deep crimson stare.  
It had already taken Papyrus. It was coming for Undyne, for Sans, for her. For everyone.  
“Stay away from anomaly.” Sans had said. Stay away. 

Alphys was a liar. Alphys was a coward. Those monsters still lurching even now in the shadows of her basement were a testament to those truths. But Alphys was something else now, too.

Alphys was a skeleton. When her past universe’s Undyne had told her of skeleton monsters’ magical strength her one eye lit up the way it did when they watched the most hot-blooded shonen anime together.

She smirked bright, because it seemed like just the anime thing to do.

“S-sorry, Sans. I uh, got an Underground to s-save.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey uh. Where did I go for....six...months? Life mostly, depression, busy with stuff.
> 
> This chapter is short but the next one will be a hum-dinger. I just wanted to get something out because gosh, six months. Look at this mess. Cobwebs everywhere.


	9. A Twice-Dead Demon and an Act of Heroism

*Check  
*Alphys the Ossified  
*ATK: 999 DEF: 999  
*Not supposed to exist. She wants to prove herself.

You knew immediately that wasn’t right. You’ve toyed with this universe long enough to know the moment Sans catches on to your intentions he lets the cowardly lizard know and she hides herself away in the lower parts of the labs, the parts only Frisk and their childish friendship ploys can ever get to.

And yet, here she is. Instigating a FIGHT with you, even! It’s been so, so long since anything new presented itself in this world. You were beginning to fret that perhaps you’d finally seen it all. Even Sans himself seemed to be growing increasingly bored of your stale cat-and-mouse game once he’d realized you wouldn’t be ending reality any time soon. You hated to admit it, but you were starting to worry that crybaby brother of yours had a point when he warned you (or Frisk, technically) about perverted sentimentality all those resets ago. Maybe he still did, actually.

Well, it didn’t matter now, because there was something very new happening right in front of your eyes to distract you for a little while.

Your smile curled up sickly sweet at her, standing there with her shoulders hunched like she was about to ask you if you liked anime instead of like she’d just watched you turn the woman she loves into a pile of sparkly fish flakes. What did her attacks look like? You’d never seen them. Frisk had never seen them. Nothing either of you had ever done had ever managed to coax a FIGHT out of her. With stats like those she was probably going to kill you a whole bunch. That was just fine by you. The thrill of something being on the line was all that made your quasi-existence worth living, anyway. 

A clumsily made bone attack came whizzing by your head, proving your point.

“Y-you k-k-killed her! H-how…?” The bone dissipated almost immediately, none of the fancy patterns or surprise fake-outs that made fighting Sans one of the last few remaining vaguely exciting things. Maybe this wouldn’t be an interesting fight after all. “W-why?”

You glanced down at the dust pile beneath your feet and kicked some of it into the abyss below. Anger was a good motivation to get someone used to hiding behind their pet robot to show you something more impressive.

She gasp-choked. You rolled your eyes.

“I uh, I d-don’t want to hurt you. N-not really. I r-really liked humans. E-even the ones I met on the s-surface were…well, not nice b-but…determined, heh. P-plus, they make some great cartoons.” What was she going on about? You kicked another handful of Undyne’s dust off the bridge. She cringed, muttering something low under her breath. Was she seriously counting to ten? Seeing a spineless lizard monster grow a spine would have been a lot more satisfying if she weren’t being so pathetic about it.

“B-but uh, Sans says you’re not human, anyway.” The ground rumbled. Crashes of lightning struck the bridge, leaving black scorch marks on the wood by your feet. “I uh, dunno what you did with Frisk, b-but if I c-can pull them back, maybe I can get him back, too.”

Electric bullets poured out of her claws, staining the walls of the cavern in brilliant yellow light. You’d never seen anything like this, not in a thousand resets. You had only a moment to appreciate the spectacle before those bolts of energy came at you, goring your soul in a flash. With your HP bleeding out and consciousness fading quickly, you tried to take note of the pattern of her attacks. There was nothing for you to memorize. It looked like a flood of meaningless chaos, all power and no precision. It was nothing like Undyne, or Mettaton, or even Sans could dish out. This was what made these brief flings with having a physical form worthwhile. Amazing coming from Alphys, who you remember mocking as she struggled to give charge to one of Frisk’s RC cars just a reset ago. Wait…

Your train of thought was broken by the shattering sound of your soul. Only one attack and she’d managed to kill you. Well, you’d have to thank her for that light show extra well with your knife once you load your SAVE.

“shit, al. wow. that kid was in for a shock. call ‘em a door because you just gave them the dead bolt. might’ve been tuesday a minute ago but its fry day now. heh.” Frisk tugged at you for control, asking what happened to Alphys as if you knew any more than they did when you both literally share a conscious. You ignored them, trying to focus on the sound of Sans’s voice even as the beckoning of Determination pulled you back from death.

“shame you probably just doomed all of us.”

If she hadn’t, he certainly just did. Sans didn’t like Alphys, you had assumed. Even in the eye-rollingly peaceful resets Frisk created, he kept his distance from her. But he was different now, his skull baring that fracture across it that he was acting so extra dodgy about. Frisk seemed nervous about something, too. Last reset something had happened to Sans to give him that strange reset-transcending scar, an impossibility of itself since all that was supposed to remain after a reset was faint and easily fading memories, if that. Frisk seemed especially not willing to share that memory with you, blocking it out the best they could. If you focused, you could vaguely remember Papyrus with fat, cartoonish tears streaming down his face as ‘you’ comfort him, “IT’S FINE, DR. ALPHYS WILL BE ABLE TO HELP HIM AND I AM DEFINITELY NOT VERY UPSET WITH MYSELF THAT I IGNORED SUCH OBVIOUS SIGNS-“ and Undyne, quiet for once in her life whispering “-and she thought it would help him, for some reason?”   
And Alphys, at the center of this mystery. The Royal Scientist who dabbled in things she had no business dabbling in. The coward who would do anything to get someone to like her. She was…

That’s right, she was never a skeleton before. In fact, weren’t skeletons supposed to be extinct? When you had been alive the first time eons ago, there wasn’t a single skeleton in the Underground. How could you miss something like that? It was so painfully obvious a thing to overlook, and yet you’d never once considered it.

Sans and her were up to something. You had a knife that would be perfectly good at carving that ‘something’ out of her.

 

* You mustn’t give up!  
*Chara, stay determined!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *bangs fists on the table chanting 'Chara chapter' over and over again* 
> 
> Where the heck is the dude this fic is supposed to be about, anyway? Not existing really puts a dampen on the amount of things you can do. He's around, though. Promise.


	10. A Duty and an Apprentice

“Humans are disgusting, Alphys.” Gaster slammed the human anatomy book resting on his work table shut with a huff.

Alphys did not look up from her spot on the laboratory floor where she was engaged in serious crayoning work. She was very used to his half-lecture, half-talking to himself with an audience manner of speaking by now.

“I dunno, Mr. Dr. Gaster, I t-think they’re pretty neat.” He massaged his browbone, pulling out a tape recorder from a drawer underneath his worktable.

“Their reproductive methods are so crass, all organs and orifices and fluids. Absolutely barbaric.” Suddenly it occurred to him that this was a highly inappropriate subject of lecture to be giving a toddler. He shook his head, tapping the record button. No, the most esteemed monster biologist in the world’s… apprentice? (Ward? Morality pet? He was not yet willing to assign a name to whatever one called ‘smaller monster who lives with me in my lab and I take care of’) should absolutely be knowledgeable in everything pertaining to his field, including the traditionally considered not age-appropriate topics. “Did you know, Alphys, that humans can reproduce on accident?”’

“Accident, s-sir?” She looked up at him, sensing that this was the lecture half of the lecture and talking to himself out loud dichotomy.

“Can you imagine, ending up a parent without even intending to be one?” The irony of his statement was not lost on her. She kneaded her hands awkwardly with her eyes down. Oh dear, look what he’d done. He was terrible at this ‘relating to others’ things. “That is a problem we monsters are lucky not to have. To always have a choice in the matter saves us a lot of heartbreak. Monster children are always born from the love shared by two parents.” Not exactly a thousand percent scientifically accurate, but it got the guilty look off her face. “Love…and intent to reproduce and a pooled exchange of magic, of course.” There. Scientifically accurate.

He did not mention that he was as horrified as he was envious of human’s ability to reproduce accidentally. He’d rubbed souls with plenty of skeletons in his younger years, but it had been an activity less focused on the business side of the equation and much more on pleasure. But if he had been forced to settle down, learn about raising a family instead of digging so deep into his research…No, those were dangerous, useless thoughts.

“Mr. Dr. Gaster, sir?” She seemed concerned. How long had he been staring into space for?

“What do you think about legacy, Alphys?” She cocked her head in confusion, but his mind was already jumping around too fast to offer an explanation. “You’ll make a fine Royal Scientist someday, no doubt. Ten times the monster I am, and a thousand years younger.”

“Oh, l-legacy!” She nodded, though she clearly did not exactly follow. “I uh, don’t think I’ll e-ever be able to replace you, Mr. Dr. Gaster. I’m uh, kinda stupid? …M-maybe find someone else?”

“You’re teaching me more than I’m teaching you, Alphys, child. For instance, do you know how often I have thought about my legacy before you entered my life?”

She fiddled with her claws some more, used to him asking these kinds of random rhetorical questions. 

“No, stupid question. I agree. Better one: tell me the properties of a monster soul.” An easy question to give her some confidence. Also, his skull was spinning a mile a minute and he needed a moment to catch up with his brain.

“Uh m-monster souls are made of magic, j-just like our bodies. They hold our w-whole essence. W-we can’t live without our souls, and if a soul gets h-hurt it’s uh…. p-pretty bad.”

His mind went to very dark places all of a sudden. He looked at her, still not sure what he felt for the tiny reptile monster that had lived with him for what, four months now? She was always so quiet. She put up with his insane rambling and loud experiments carried out late into the night. She caught on so quick to whatever he was teaching her and devoured the information with gusto. He hadn’t just been flattering her when he said she was ten times the monster he was. She would, in fact, make a fine Royal Scientist someday. 

“What happens when a monster soul is damaged, Alphys? Can monsters survive the damage?” Asking questions he did not know the answer to himself was a mighty bold way to quiz an apprentice. But she was going to succeed him someday, and that meant she was going to learn things he never did.

“Who would do something l-like that, Mr. Dr. Gaster?” 

His mind went to darker places still. Humans, hundreds of them, storming the skeleton village like vultures diving a carcass. Asgore, gripping Gaster’s shoulder tight and telling him to stay put, that he would only die with them if he ran in. “Not your time, Wingdings. Monsterkind needs you.” He had always been scrawny even for a species that was nothing but bone; wiry, frail and awkward. He’d preferred study to practicing magic, he couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. He hated to fight, anyway. All he wanted to do was help people, it was what pushed him to become a scientist in the first place. He never wanted anyone to hurt.

But they’d all hurt. They all died while he sat by and watched, Asgore gripping his shoulder and repeating “Not your time, Wingdings.” Was it his time now?

“Humans. Or perhaps someone who hated a monster enough.”

She stood up and looked at him, fear wide in her beady little eyes. She was so small, only four years old. But she’d grow up fast. She was very smart. He patted her frill, bone rubbing on scales. He wondered if it felt soothing.

“Monsters reproduce by melding their souls and pooling their magic together. Humans…well most non-magical animals, reproduce through that crass mating method. There is another method of reproduction in the kingdom of life, though, Alphys. A cutting from a plant can be replanted and it will sprout roots and grow, an exact genetic copy of the plant it was cut from.”

She pushed her head out from under his hand and stumbled backward into a corner, knocking books onto the floor with her tail.

“M-monsters d-d-die when someone cuts their soul, s-s-sir.” Her voice was so frail, like the day that they’d met. She looked pitiful, curled up in the corner of the room looking like a lost pet.

“Possibly. No one has ever tried it. Humans preferred much more direct methods for killing us, and what monster in their right mind has any reason to do something so heinous to another monster?” 

Maybe this was not a lecture subject for young ears, either. No. She needed to hear this, if only to deter her from trying it herself at some point. Students who make the same mistakes as their teachers have terrible teachers.

“I never once considered my legacy before meeting you, child. And why should I have? I am Wingdings Gaster, nigh-immortal Royal Scientist to the king. It is my prison, my reason for living.”

Oh dear, she was crying. He sighed and sent a magical hand to press the stop button on the tape recorder. It was fine, he didn’t have much more to discuss with her. He was not going to debate matters of eternity with someone who’s age he could count on one hand.

“…You t-t-told me we h-have to live on for them…” He had said that, hadn’t he? Curses, he’d have to stop lying to mentally fragile children at some point in his life.

“Please do. Live on for them. And perhaps if it comes down to that, live on for me as well.” She shivered. “I think it would be best if you went to stay in the castle with King Asgore for a while. He is much better with children than I am, and he is quite fond of your company.” The way she cringed made him force out an added “Not forever, of course. Just while I conduct some preliminary experiments.” 

Preliminary experiments that would consist of him torturing himself. Genius or not, she didn’t need to see or hear any of that. If he died, his dust would send a clear enough message about unethical experiments born out of self-loathing and guilt. Raising children to behave when you possessed no internal moral compass yourself was so difficult. 

She looked like she wanted to say something, but she just nodded and sobbed.

“Don’t look so sad, Alphys, child. If this goes well you may find yourself with a-“ His mouth froze with the word ‘sibling’on his lips. There were too many wrong, foul, incorrect connotations to that one. “A friend.”

\---------  
_He'd known Chara Dreemur in life, of course. As best friend to the king and queen, he had even babysat the little demon-spawn a few times. They had always been bratty, but ultimately a childish and harmless kind of bratty. Gaster had even somewhat pitied the human, or as much as he could pity a human. Whatever made them hate other humans as much as he himself did had clearly hurt them deeply._

_Death had made them dangerous. The force of determination made them deadly. Even here, Gaster could not figure out what the anomaly was planning. His children were being stalked by this creature, and he was powerless to protect them._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double surprise of Gaster chapter and me actually updating more than once a month :D


	11. A Beatdown and A Prank

With the corpse of a human child bleeding out at her feet, the weight of what Alphys had just done hit her like brick to the face. 

“grats on the LOVE, al. don’t worry, it won’t stick around after a reload.” Sans’s voice was miles away, even though she could see him standing across from her on the other side of the bridge. She looked from the tiny body below her to her claws, the pounding rush of adrenaline making her vision blurry. The adrenaline was cut with something stronger, a bubbling anger rising up within her and making her twitch. “look, we don’t got long before they reload. you gotta promise me something, ok al? don’t tell them anything, no matter what they do. if they find out…” His words bounced meaninglessly off her. 

She glared at him. He was just standing there with that stupid guiltless grin on his face he always wore. He put her in this position, having to kill a child to help him. His plan cost her Undyne, her happy ending, her everything. Undyne was gone, dust blowing into the chasm. And now even if a reset could bring Undyne back to her, she could never be the same. 

Now, she was a child murderer. 

And Sans? He was just standing there, grinning like an idiot. Like this was nothing, just a big stupid joke.

He waved a hand in front of her face. “al?”

Before she was even aware of what she was doing, her claw was raised in the air and a massive animalistic skull with glowing yellow eyes and pair of huge tusks jutting from either side of the mouth had appeared above it.

“You did this to me.” The conviction in her voice surprised and frightened even her. Above them, she could feel a surge of electricity magic building in the skull’s mouth. She was terrified. She was absolutely furious.

He just shrugged, making her even angrier. The anger became more magic fed to the skull, the light poking through holes in the gaps between its teeth. She wanted this to stop, for this horrible thing she had somehow made with her magic to go away. She wanted to tell him to run because she wasn’t sure she could control it for much longer. 

More than that, even, she wanted to kill him.

“you should know by now i ain’t scared of dying, al. hell, if it helps you blow off steam, you should give me the ol’ blaster to the face a few more times after this.” He dipped his head, letting his eye lights sink down to his nose bone. “but i can tell you, it’s only gonna make you feel worse once the LOVE wears off. take it from an alcoholic, waking up from a bender like that one’s a real sobering experience.”

She got the feeling he knew this from personal experience, and guilt made her hesitate. How many times had he been forced to kill this child, this Frisk-but-not? Which of his friends had he lashed out at in a LOVE-induced rage? This new hell was hers, but it had been his alone for far longer.

For some reason that her bloodlust-dulled mind couldn’t fathom, even this thought didn’t make her any less angry. With every moment, the hum of powerful magic grew louder and harder to hold back. The jaws of the skull snapped and clacked wildly. He grinned tiredly at her, so casual, so disgustingly accepting of the whole situation, pushing her over the edge of her rage.

How could he not care? She was a killer, she was going to kill him, and he was just standing there looking like he was debating a nap. Not afraid to die? She would make him afraid, kill him so bad he’d feel something besides mildly drowsy.

“heh, guess you’ll see what i mean pretty soon. see ya next reset, al.”

Magic swelled and swelled until the light from the attack blinded Alphys. The maw of the skull flung open like a storm door in a hurricane, spewing more energy than it would have taken to kill a Boss Monster, let alone a shriveled soul with one sliver of hope in it. Whatever existed of Sans the skeleton moments ago had been decimated. Alphys didn’t even get a chance to feel that second rush of adrenaline.

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

Alphys was standing before the human, their knife drawn and their smile wild. They stood atop the pile of Undyne’s dust. 

She had seen this before, it had only happened minutes ago. This was right before she killed the human in one hit with that lightning spell, right before Sans had appeared to congratulate her with terrible electric puns. Sans himself, however, was nowhere to be seen. 

Sans, who moments ago, she had killed in a fit of anger even as he’d warned her she’d regret it. Sans, at his lowest point of self-loathing, who didn’t even seem bothered by the threat of being murdered by his oldest friend.

Monsters were not supposed to kill each other. It was so completely foreign an idea that their laws didn’t even have a written punishment for murder of another monster. Murder was the stuff of humans, not a race of creatures made from compassion. LOVE was little more than a myth, something the older monsters told children to keep them properly scared of humans. 

She looked the human in their blood-red eyes, any hopes of becoming the anime heroine of her dreams crushed like she’d crushed her friend’s soul. She was no better than the demon standing before her. Maybe she was worse, at least this thing didn’t try to hide its murderous intent. 

“Y-you can’t die.” The human nodded, stepping closer to her. “D-Determination.” The human nodded again. This was the power to break Barriers, to become a god. 

“You weren’t too scared to pump it in those innocent monsters, scientist. Why are you shaking now?” Their voice was Frisk’s voice, quiet but with purpose. 

She froze, panic drumming in her skull. She felt naked before them, as if they could see her every sin. The old myths of the angel with ruby eyes sent to empty the Underground echoed in her mind.

“I k-killed you. H-him.” Their grin disappeared. “S-Sans will stop you…But I uh, I’m not going to. I couldn’t, not even if I w-wanted to. And, I d-don’t.”

Whatever humor had still remained on their face had been completely drained from it when she said that. Suddenly, with an animalistic snarl, they leapt at her, their knife a flash of silver in the dark of the cavern. She bobbed left a moment too late, and the knife stuck in the bone plating lining her right arm. The human tumbled to the floor, now unarmed with their weapon stuck in her. Dust bled from the wound in her arm freely.

The human scrambled to their feet. Dizzly, Alphys backed away from them.

“You really are useless.” Such nasty words in Frisk’s voice made her cringe. “What else can skeletons do, scientist? Don’t you want to find out?”

She looked at the knife buried in her. There was a lot of dust, but it barely hurt and hadn’t hit anything vital. If she could slink away and eat some food before she bled out, she would be fine.

The human, unfortunately, had other plans. They pulled a large twig from the sleeve of their sweater and brandished it like a sword. They swung again, and this time she was far too slow to even attempt to dodge. A loud thwack rang out as the stick hit her square in her wounded arm, driving the knife deeper in like a hammer to a nail. Dust poured from her like confetti as tears welled in her eyes. Flailing in pain, she stumbled dangerously close to the edge of the bridge. If she didn’t get away soon she would be joining Undyne in the dust tumbling towards the abyss.

That didn’t sound like such a terrible way to go, honestly. It was better than what she’d planned for herself what seemed like lifetimes ago. A hero’s death; as opposed to a coward’s.

The only problem was she knew very well now she was no hero.

The human swung again, knocking her off balance but back to the center of the bridge. She fell to her knees, too much lost dust to try and dodge any longer and no desire to fight back. The human closed the gap between them fully, holding the stick above their head like an executioner’s axe. She closed her eyes and nodded to them, taking blow after blow to the skull. When the hits stopped she finally opened her eyes, just in time to see herself fall to pieces and blow away in the Waterfall breeze.

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

Alphys looked at the knife buried in her arm. There was a lot of dust, but it barely hurt and hadn’t hit anything vital. If she could slink away and eat some food before she bled out… 

The human was already waving their stick around like a sword.

“Fight back.”

She bit her tongue and yanked the knife out of her arm. More dust poured out of the wound than before, enough that even her medical training failed to stop her from getting dizzy at the sight of it. She tossed the knife at the feet of the human.

“Uh, n-no.” She knelt and closed her eyes again. She felt the sting and heard the crack of the stick coming down again and again on her head. Had it been anyone else for any other reason, Alphys would have found this unbelievably badass. Were it Undyne taking these blows to the face silently and without a complaint, she’d be swooning. Sadly, she knew it was a coward who was only using this act of defiance as a delay to prepare for an even greater act of cowardice. 

Furious that their attacks were barely fazing her anymore, the human screamed out. This time she didn’t feel the sting of the twig, but the sharpness of steel on bone slicing into her throat. She opened her eyes just in time to see herself fall to pieces and blow away in the Waterfall breeze.

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

Alphys looked at the knife buried in her arm. There was a lot of dust, but it barely hurt and hadn’t hit anything vital. If she could slink away…

Well, less of a slink and more of a poof, really. She yanked the knife out of her arm without a moment’s hesitation and threw at the human’s feet. She had a feeling this kind of magic would be most difficult for her to learn. It had nothing to do with her own natural form of magic, and it seemed to be something only Sans was capable of. Void magic, maybe? That was a kind of magic skeletons were supposed to be excellent at, and not a single other monster alive could do it. 

“Fight back.”

Void magic. Electricity magic was easy enough to understand in theory, even if her magic pool had once been so horribly shallow that she could never cast any. Electricity was just negative ions in the air, just gather them up and push them where they’re needed. Void magic, though? That was dark matter, and dark matter was very well outside her field of expertise. Matter was stuff, so it was logical to assume that dark matter should be the absence of stuff. Moving through the void should just be as simple as finding an absence of stuff and stuffing oneself into it.

The human beating on her repeatedly was making it very hard for her to think. Maybe it was worth field testing that magic, considering that even if it went horribly wrong, the human seemed very intent on keeping her alive.

“H-hey, you uh, wanna see what else skeletons can do?” They drew back their arm mid-swing, eyes lighting up like a kid on Gyftmas. Sans would be very proud her first use of this magic was for a prank. “W-watch this.”

She focused her mind on moving elsewhere, anywhere, somewhere far away from the human, from Sans, from herself. She threw herself forward, into the nothingness that surrounded her, and emerged on the other side.

 

…The other side of where?

“Tralala, I spy a little fossil seeking her living tar pit. Are you lost, buried under all this dirt?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo what if you were going in to fight like, Sephiroth or something, and instead of him kicking your ass back to the stone age he just sat down and was like 'yknow i am kind of a terrible person, go ahead and kill me' would that be wild or what. Tbh it's exactly the kind of thing Toby himself would totally do in a game.


	12. A Lab Coat and A Headache

Snapping back from the jaws of death like a dog on a very short leash, Sans found himself more tired alive than he was dead. 

From his hidden spot on the cliff overlooking the bridge into Hotland, he could see the freshly dusty and very much alive anomaly, and the cowering Alphys. Their eyes were locked, and both looked ready to fight. Sans took a moment to wonder if that’s what he had looked like the first time the kid had gone on a murder spree and he himself had been the one standing before them in the Judgement Hall. That was before his fights with them had become a formality, less his chance to avenge the dead and more a reminder of their sins. The sight of Alphys standing up to the most dangerous creature in all of reality made him smirk with pride. Anybody who would dare call her a coward was an idiot. All she needed was someone who believed in her and she could face anything.

He watched her glance over to the spot he had been at last time she saw him. She looked horrified. His pride immediately sank, replaced by waves of gnawing guilt. He shortcut away. There was nothing he could do for her now, anyway. Interfering could cause a paradox and trying to talk in between reloads would probably just end with her blasting him into a pile of ash again.

Not that he was deeply upset about that whole ‘being murdered’ thing or anything. Nah. He was Sans ‘Doesn’t care about anything or anyone anymore’ the skeleton.

Whoops, he accidentally shortcut himself back into Grillby’s instead of his basement. And oops, there he went, accidentally knocking another alcohol bottle into his mouth and accidentally draining it of its contents. Grabbing a couple extra bottles for the road, he teleported himself home.

...Which was a decision he immediately regretted when he took one look around the basement and dropped them all on the floor in horror.

The Machine was gone. Everything was gone. No books, no blueprints, no worktable. The only things in his basement were one confused skeleton and the shattered remains of the three tequila bottles that skeleton had just been carrying. There wasn’t a hint of anything ever even having been down there, no dirt or dust or wear marks in the tile. It looked like Papyrus had hit it with one of his famous cleaning sprees, except Papyrus didn’t know about Sans’s hidden lab, and if he did he knew well enough to stay away from it.

“shit. shit. shit.” 

He jolted upstairs and threw open the door to his room, praying to whoever would listen that his alternate universe self had just decided to store his science stuff there. His eyelights scanned around the room. Trash tornado, laundry-covered treadmill, collection of ketchup bottles, bare mattress laying on the ground. No machine. He was seconds from spitting out another collection of swears when he noticed something very unusual on top of his mattress: a lump of grimy white fabric.

It was a lab coat. Not just any lab coat, but one with the Royal crest stitched into it. Underneath the crest was a nametag. He ran his finger down the metal piece as he read it aloud. “sans the skeleton, phd. royal physicist.” Royal Physicist. He stared at the tiny nametag dumbfoundedly as the gears clicked into place.

In this universe, he was engaged to Alphys. He stayed, long enough to go from CORE maintenance man to the Royal Physicist. He stayed, and worked through the Very Bad Thing He Did, and Alphys was willing to marry him, and he was the Royal Physicist and not just a lazy idiot with a stolen broken time machine in his basement. He stayed.

And if he stayed, that meant that the Machine stayed, too.

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

Sans clung to his three now thankfully un-dropped bottles of tequila and immediately shortcut himself into the True Lab. Navigating around with the annoying temporal issue of the anomaly reloading all the time would be a pain, but it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to repeating the same couple minutes over and over again.

“hey uh, i am no longer sure if you guys exist in this universe, but if you do, i’m here.” Only silence greeted him. That didn’t necessarily mean that he was alone, especially where the Amalgamates were concerned. He’d learned from the resets where he had to take care of them in Alphys’s stead that they were extremely skittish, even with familiar faces.

“al’s gonna flip her shit when she finds out she never made you guys, heh.” Still silence. He strolled to the DT Extractor. Even being as intimately familiar with the True Lab as he was, the place still gave him the creeps. Something about it was unsettling in ways even knowing what lurked in the shadows didn’t dispel. There was always a distinct feeling of being watched.

He peered into the empty eye sockets of the DT Extractor, uncorking one of his bottles and taking a sip from it.

“You’re forgetting someone.”

The voice made him jump, making him drop his bottles to the ground as he whipped around. He cursed as he peeked up at the Amalgamate who startled him.

“hey, i know it’s like basically you guys’ shtick to scare people crapless but…” The Amalgamate was staring at him with pupil-less eyes. It was in a form he had never seen one of them take before, a ghastly pale version of the armless reptile kid from Snowdin Town. “nah, i’m bein rude. are you snowy’s mom? ice to meet you, sorry for giving you the cold shoulder, etcetera.” The Amalgamate continued staring at him. “sheesh, tough crowd.”

“Your fiancée. She’s being killed right now.” How’d they know that? The Amalgamates were certainly weird, but he was pretty sure they weren’t psychic.

…Probably?

“nah, she’s fine. she’s got those blasters of her to protect her. i myself can attest they hurt like…”

“Chara will torture her. They won’t stop. They’ll kill her again and again and again until they get what they want from her.” The creature looked wracked with pain, as if they were the one being tortured. “It’s not perfect, Sans, but it’s the best I can do. Stay at her side.” The creature’s gaze went from Sans to the DT Extractor behind him. “Stop looking for the dead.”

Sans just about choked. It was impossible, there was no way. And yet…

“…dad?” His voice was tiny, like a child’s. Like he was the scared babybones who used to panic when his father left him alone for even a second down in the True Lab facing a whole terrifying world where calling out for him was the equivalent of screaming into the void.

The creature was quiet, not a hint of emotion on its sickly face.

“No, Sans. I’m just a goner.”

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

Sans was alone. 

“…dad?”

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

Sans was alone.

“please, dad. don’t leave.”

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

With this many reloads so quickly in a row the anomaly was no doubt killing Alphys repeatedly.

“you gotta understand. i can’t- i can’t do this.”

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

His head was pounding, the pain seeping through the crack in his skull. “i love her, dad. you know that. but…”

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

Sans gripped the sides of his skull dizzily, not quite sure of where or what he was. “the resets- driving me crazy...” 

The world stuttered.

~~~~~

Sans was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Shit Happens' the chapter, the musical, the videogame adaptation.


	13. Two Questions That Answer Each Other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of things I have to say but all of them are spoilery for the contents of this chapter, so all I'm going to say in these beginning notes is that I'm now very heavily suggesting you read [ Jokes and Half-Truths](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13256703) since the events of that fic are directly referenced in this chapter.
> 
> And also, this is probably the fluffiest thing I'm ever going to write. Hehehehe.

For the first time in years, Sans was wearing a suit. 

For the first time in his life, Sans was wearing a suit of his own volition. This wasn’t a big fancy meeting with the king in New Home to discuss his promotion, or some important official Royal Scientist thing he had to attend. This was just a party, just a regular hangout at Grillby’s like he did almost every night (though not lately), only with a few extra people in attendance.

So why was he so nervous? 

It was probably the suit, he decided. Made him look like he was going to a funeral.

He looked himself over in the mirror for only the thousandth time in a row. Same lazy skeleton with dark circles under his eye sockets as always. Despite everything, still him. Heh. He played with the tiny box in his pocket absentmindedly, still looking at the always-tired skull looking back at him as if the clown on the other side was going to give him the pep talk needed for tonight. This was such a stupid idea. Maybe he could just slink back into his sweats and slippers and put on some MTTV and call it a night. Was ditching his own party too low an act of laziness for even him?

…Nah, he’d totally do it, if not for the fact it wasn’t just his party. Play hooky from his own party, sure. Play hooky from his favorite person in the world’s party? Nah, he was at least better than that. His fingers brushed the box again. He hated parties, but for her he could make a special exception. Besides, he knew how much she also hated parties. She’d probably not want to stick around too long. They could sneak out once the rest of the partygoers started getting wasted and be flopped over the couch in slippers and sweats watching TV together before midnight.

Or, the nasty voice in the back of Sans’s head suggested, depending on how the night went for him, he’d be right at his favorite spot for a bout of wallowing in self-pity. Not that he particularly trusted himself to do the right thing while depressed and in a bar that would be full of partiers drinking their asses off. His self-control was better now, sure, but it still wasn’t something he was going to bet on. 

Well then, either way by midnight he’d be home. Not so bad. 

He reached for his brother’s bottle of MTT Brand Bishie Cream and dabbed some on his cheekbones. It smelled godawful and didn’t seem to do much but make him slightly slimier looking. What a scam. Sighing, he gave himself one last once over, decided there was no saving a face like his, and shortcut to Hotland.

Alphys was already standing outside the lab waiting for him, squinting at her phone with the usual level of extreme intentness and oblivious to his entrance. Adorable as always, and absolutely prime for a ribbing.

“is this the residence of the legendarily sexy royal scientist?” he asked, throwing his voice with an accent.

She didn’t look up. It appeared she was posting some rant on the Undernet, judging by how fast her claws were typing. “H-he’s uh, not in at the moment. J-just the frumpy one right now. Can I h-help you?”

Great, now he was blushing. She made it so hard for him to prank her sometimes. He found himself stuttering like an idiot up trying to continue his joke. His nerves really were shot if he couldn’t even finish a jape.

“al.” She perked up immediately at the sound of his voice, stuffing her phone into her pocket. Her arms wrapped around him in a big squishy hug. He breathed in deep to steady his nerves. She smelled like noodles.

“Ah, S-Sans! Sorry, sorry. Someone was trying to debate sub versus dub and I…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at him, making him even more self-conscious. “We’re uh, j-just going to Grillby’s, right?” Shit, the stupid suit really was too much.

“gonna be doing a standup bit for the party, figured i’d try to look the part of funnyman.” Well, that was half true. He was certainly a clown, anyway.

She smiled at him with swooning admiration.

“You uh, l-look…Wow, Sans. I didn’t dress up or anything, and e-everyone’s gonna be there. Maybe I should j-just…” She was shivering. He put a hand on her shoulder.

“nah. you look al-some as always. besides, this is your party. anybody wants to say anythin, just remind ‘em you’ve been working nonstop for months.”

“R-right.” She took his hand and leaned her head on his shoulder. She was sweating so bad it was leaving wet stains on her t-shirt and making it hard for him to grip her claw. He felt terrible for even considering ditching the party and leaving her alone. “What would I ever do without you? I uh, d-don’t think I could handle it.” He felt his soul sink when she said that. Speechless, he kind of just stared at her floundering for a quip to reply with.

“heh, for one you might be able to finally sit in a chair without it being whoopie cushioned.” Smooth. She’d never know he just finished having a mini-existential crisis right before her eyes. “you ready to go? pap’ll have a fit if we’re late.” He could physically feel her getting more anxious with every moment. Her tail was whipping up little dust clouds behind them.

“We uh, d-don’t have to stay long, do we?” He tried to make his grin look reassuring, but his own anxieties were making it entirely too difficult to smile in earnest.

“course not. we can just give our speeches, grab a ‘burg, and vamoose.” Not to mention that one teeny tiny little thing he was also planning to do. Nothing too big, certainly nothing that would even make Sans ‘literally yawns in the face of death’ the skeleton nervous. “after the party, i was thinkin we could swing back to my place and check out some of the new movies i found at the dump.”

Ah, now there was that genuine Alphys smile.

“Y-yeah?” He winked at her.

“pap’ll probably be out all night babysittin undyne. we’ll have the whole place to ourselves.”

She was back to shaking now, but at least she was also grinning devilishly while shaking. Bribing Papyrus with the offer of doing laundry to be busy elsewhere all night was totally worth it if he got to see that look on her face.

“S-so, what are we s-standing around for? Let’s uh, party.”

He pulled her through the void and into Grillby’s.

The bar was still largely empty. He figured it’d be easier on Alphys to come in while it was early, before any guests actually arrived. Papyrus was the only monster already there, putting party hats on the booth’s tables while singing to himself. He spotted the two and ran over to them.

“WOWIE, YOU’RE EARLY FOR ONCE. BETWEEN THIS AND THE LAUNDRY OFFER, I’M BEGINNING TO THINK YOU’RE TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF, SANS.”

“heh, don’t worry bro. i’ll leaf all the punctuality to you from now on. not really interested in branching out.” Papyrus huffed.

“YOU ARE VERY LUCKY THAT TODAY IS SUPPOSED TO BE A DAY FOR BEING PROUD OF YOU, OR I WOULD BE SO DISSAPOINTED IN YOU.” He knelt to be at eye level with his stumpy brother and his brother’s even stumpier girlfriend and stuck out his arm to her. “DOCTOR ALPHYS. SO GLAD YOU COULD MAKE IT. I MISS YOUR STRANGE PASSIONATE RANTS ON UNDERNET.” She floppily shook his hand, looking at the floor the whole time. Sans giggled. Watching his quiet but awkward girlfriend and his loud but awkward brother interact was always a schadenfreude delight.

“Uh, y-yeah. Been working so hard on the project. Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately…” Papyrus laughed in a way he was probably hoping sounded hearty, but mostly sounded maniacal. 

“I’LL BET YOU ARE GLAD TO HAVE THAT BEHIND YOU. NOW YOU’LL HAVE MORE FREE TIME FOR MORE…DOMESTIC CONCERNS.” He leaned closer to Sans and whisper-yelled “AUDIBLE WINK” while audibly winking at him. Sans felt himself involuntarily grimace. He was going to have to have a little talk with him. Schadenfreude was great and all, except when it was at his own expense.

“I’m probably j-just mostly going to be catching up on all the anime I missed to be honest, heh.” She turned from one skeleton to the other suspiciously, looking to Sans with an expression that read ‘Is this just Papyrus being Papyrus or is something going on here?’ He shrugged, which he hoped she interpreted as ‘the former’ or ‘i dunno.’ “…A-audible wink?”

The door flung open with a loud slam. In stepped Sans’s savoir, loudly announcing her entrance in the way only Undyne could. 

“Yo, who’s ready to fucking party?!” She stomped her way over to the trio with reckless abandon. “Alphy! Oh my god, I haven’t seen you in weeks! How’s it been?”

The two were babbling full-speed at each other about their ‘human history’ cartoons in minutes, trying to catch up on the weeks they’d been apart by packing enough words in that Sans couldn’t hear himself think. It was kind of amazing either one of them could actually tell what the other one was saying. Taking the time while his girlfriend was distracted, he dragged Papyrus into the back room of the bar by the scarf. He appreciated the role reversal. Usually it was Pap dragging him out of there.

“so, what was that about?”

“…I MAY HAVE JUMPED THE GUN JUST A BIT.” He wrung his gloves guiltily, looking like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. It was hard to stay angry at Papyrus. “I’M JUST SO EXCITED FOR YOU, SANS. MY OWN BROTHER, OUT THERE ASKING SOMEONE TO MARRY HIM.”

“yeah, me too. not sure excited is the right word for it, though.” Terrified, maybe. Existential. “…you think she’ll say yes?”

“NOT A DOUBT IN MY MIND. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO BE WORRIED ABOUT.” He looked at his brother, standing proud with his chest puffed out. What Sans wouldn’t give for that kind of single-minded confidence that things would be just fine.

“yeah, i mean, we are basically the most obnoxious couple in the underground. i’m not exactly worried she’s not that into me or anything. it’s just…” Sans noticed his hands were shaking. The world suddenly felt huge, and he was just a stumpy idiot sweating in a suit. What was he doing here? This whole idea was so stupid. It was just him and Papyrus in the back room, but he could feel a thousand eyes on him judging him for having the nerve to try and make Alphys’s party about himself. 

Shit, he needed a drink. Just a shot or two, just something to take the edge off this night and give him some of that liquid courage Papyrus was lucky enough to possess naturally.

…No, no, no. 

Absolutely not, and he mentally cursed himself for even thinking about it. He wasn’t that person anymore. He was Recovering Sans now, and Recovering Sans talked about his problems instead of trying to escape them. Even if all he wanted to do was drink until he didn’t feel that gnawing emptiness inside himself, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t disappoint Alphys like that, especially on her special night. He braced for the worst of it, and this really was the worst of it, just trying to say what it was he felt.

“so...” He balled his shaking hands into fists. Why did this feel so much like taking a step into the abyss outside Waterfall? “so, it was about a week ago. we’re on like our fourth all-nighter in a row, both tired as hell from working on this project, sprawled over our worktable. she’s barely lucid, i’m even closer to not lucid territory, and she rolls her head over and even though we’re both almost completely out of it, she just looks at me with this expression on her face like she just remembered she left the oven on. and i say to her ‘al, what’s wrong?’ and she asks me somethin, pap. somethin i don’t think i coulda answered even if i hadn’t been on all-nighter number four because it’s got me feelin like i haven’t felt since my drinking days.”

Papyrus was uncharacteristically silent. There was some distant worry on his brother’s face that made Sans clam up, something that made all that bullshit about talking about his problems dissolve like smoke in the air. This was Papyrus he was talking to, and Papyrus didn’t need to hear this. Papyrus, who still believed in Santa, who still believed the world could be better. Papyrus had hope, the thing that literally kept monsters alive. That was something much more valuable than Sans’s need to vent his stupid little relationship issues.

Besides, what kind of brother would he be if he couldn’t keep Papyrus safe from some of the world’s darkness?

“…she asks me ‘sans, why did the chicken cross the road?’” 

Papyrus’s face went from stone stoic through the whole color spectrum of rage in seconds, stomping his foot with temper.

“I CHANGE MY MIND. SHE WILL NO DOUBT SEE THE ERROR OF HER WAYS AND TELL YOU TO TAKE A HIKE.” 

Sans laughed in that low fake, cool way that was second nature to him. And like that, it was fine. Or, if not fine, at least no longer anyone’s problem but Sans’s. He didn’t need that drink, nope, not even a little. He totally had this. No problem. Papyrus seemed to think so, anyway, judging by how he was rambling loudly about having “ABSOLUTELY THE WORST BROTHER, POSSIBLY EVER.”

He pressed his nose bone against the porthole of the door and peeked out to the bar. While he’d been talking to Papyrus, tons of guests had apparently arrived. Alphys was swamped on all sides by chatting monsters with her claws over her head and her tail wrapped around her legs like she was caught in an air raid. It was probably time for him to go rescue her from socialization.

“well uh, worst brother’s gotta go handle some worst boyfriend business. ask grillbz to double deep fry my burger for me, will ya?” He pushed on the handle back into the bar and Papyrus yanked him back inside.

“SANS.” Sans looked down, not ready for a Papyrus lecture when he was already this anxious. “SHE LOVES YOU VERY MUCH. THINGS WILL GO FINE.” 

He nodded grimly, trying to shove his hands in those stupid tiny suit pockets, and made his way back into the bar. 

His entrance immediately drew all the attention away from Alphys and onto himself. Coworkers from his other job hounded (heh, literally) him as he hunkered down on a barstool, asking a thousand barking questions about his work on the project and when he planned to go back to doing some sentry work. If he weren’t so terribly overwhelmed at the moment, it might’ve felt good to know he was that missed. As it was, he managed to shoot a sympathetic glance over the dogging(heh) masses at his thankfully now uncrowded girlfriend. She waved to him and turned back to chatting with Undyne.

“hey guys. yeah, been working myself to the bone, so lazy that i’m slacking off on slacking off. yeah, al and i are givin a speech about it in a sec.” He wanted to be happy, being in his favorite place with his favorite people again after so long, but he found he couldn’t. Something was off besides the tiny box in his suit pocket weighing him down like a brick.

All these faces, smiling and patting him on the back and congratulating him, probably not even really fully understanding what it was he had been working on. Not that he expected them to, of course. Quantum physics wasn’t exactly the most approachable of the sciences, regardless of how close to his heart he held it. There was only one other monster in the room who had a grasp on the full scope of their project, and she was deep in a conversation about anime with her bestie.

Surrounded by loving friends, and all he could think about was the thing she’d asked him that one sleep-deprived night. More than ever, he wanted to just be alone with her.

Or drunk. That’d be nice, too. 

He settled for cracking open a ketchup bottle and chugging it down. If he used his imagination enough, maybe it would turn into whiskey. Maybe it’d turn into cyanide. 

Well, he’d never get out of here if he didn’t get this show on the road soon. He sighed, finished off the last gulp of ketchup, and climbed on top of the stool clinking the empty bottle like it was a champagne glass. Conversation died down, and anybody who wasn’t already looking at him now was.

“evenin’ everybody.” He hopped off the barstool and waltzed over to the karaoke microphone, taking a second to fiddle with it until it turned on with a squeak. “first off, big thanks to all of you for showin up. my bro worked his pelvis off getting this party set up and i’m sure he’s super glad we got this kinda crowd.” He peeked over towards the kitchen where Papyrus and Grillby were just emerging. “and of course, shoutout to pap for making this happen. this wasn’t gonna be that big of a thing until he stepped in, sayin i needed a real celebration.” His brother cheered. Sans strode towards the center of the bar, crowd reforming around his movements. “and as always, big thanks to grillbz for letting us host here and not reminding me about my tab at all tonight.” He winked at Grillby, who half-heartedly bobbed his head back. 

It was so easy for him to slip into his showman persona and just forget about all the anxiety weighing him down for a bit. He cracked his signature comedian smile and told some of his best material, really laying into the crowd to distract himself from his only worsening fear with their laughter. He found his gaze drifting to Alphys again and again. She was laughing just as hard as anyone even though she’d heard him recite the stuff a thousand times before while practicing. 

Man, she really was something special.

“alright, alright. i see my bro’s eyeballs rollin back in his sockets fast enough to power the core so i think that means i better knock it off before i find myself sleepin in the shed tonight. you guys probably have a lot of questions about what me and al have been up to these past few months, and we haven’t been able to say much about it since we’ve been so tied up. well, al’s the one who did most of the engineering work on the thing, so i’m gonna let her explain it.” He grinned at her, and she actually seemed pretty excited to talk about their work. That was the nice thing about Alphys’s anxiety; it seemed to disappear the moment she got into her comfort zone, and then she turned into this passionate ball of bubbly adorable energy. “but by all means, if you all want me to bore you to death by sittin up here teachin you about the uncertainty principle just say so.” He winked, and the crowd roared with laughter. Physics, much like Papyrus, was an acquired kind of coolness, Sans supposed.

He held out the microphone to Alphys, who scrambled through the crowd and took it in her shaking claws. He pressed his teeth to her snout and whispered “you got this, al.” before finding his way to a nearby seat. She coughed, sending tinny static sounds out of the speaker.

“Uh, h-hey everybody.” She looked down at her feet while she rummaged in her pants pocket. Stuttering, she pulled out a piece of paper and tried to read from it. “S-so, I’m uh, Dr. Alphys, if you d-don’t know me. I’m the uh…Royal Engineer. Y-yeah. Me and Sans have been working on a uh, m-machine that’s used f-for, y’know, finding uh, anomalies in temporal space. P-paradoxes, t-timeline splits, uh, alternate universes?” She was staring directly at Sans. “We’re uh, we’re hoping to use this technology to find a way around the Barrier.” She squinted at the paper in her hand, crumpled it into a ball, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, he had moved in and weaved his arms in the spaces between hers in a sort of awkward hug from behind. His presence seemed to calm her down, judging by the tiny sigh and whispered “Sansss” she let out.

“B-b-but that’s not its only use, of course!” He could hear her confidence building, and it made his pride in her swell. “There’s s-so many applications for this machine it’s kind of staggering! If it works right, w-we might be able to find a universe where the Barrier never even existed!” She squirmed out of his hug, too excited to be held back from posing like one of her anime characters. “W-why stop there? Maybe find a universe where ramen and chips are good for you, where Kissy Cutie 2 was a critical darling!” She might be getting a little too excited; the audience was murmuring with barely whispered shock. He tapped her on the shoulder and did the neck slicing pantomime. She nodded, probably realizing that the general public wouldn’t understand how far off multiverse travel still was.

“Oh, uh. B-but we’re not really at that stage of testing right now. Our m-machine can detect paradoxes and e-even some closely linked universes b-but it’s nothing major j-just yet.” The crowd went dead silent again, and Alphys was back to looking like a nervous wreck. “A-actually most of the experiments we’ve been doing with it have been tethered to uh, this universe. B-but! The important thing is we b-built it and it w-works. T-That’s what we’ve been doing. Working on a uh, functioning prototype. And n-now we have one!” She wrung her hands at the gathered monsters. “So uh, so yeah.” 

There was an awkward silence that blanketed the room, followed by uproarious applause. She bowed, cringing slightly.

Sans held out his hand and pointed to the microphone, which she relinquished to him like it was on fire.

“we’ll be talkin more about it at the official announcement sometime in the coming weeks. we’re so excited to be able to show you guys this thing.” He felt the creeping anxiety again but tried his best to power through it. “but, while i got your attention that’s not the only thing i wanna say tonight.”

Alphys looked at him with a confused expression. He winked at her, fighting the urge to shut himself up. He could do this, all he had to do was remember how much he loved her, and it would all be worth it.

“al, stop me if you heard this one.” With his hand on the box in his pocket, he was as ready as he’ll ever be. “what did the skeleton say to the lizard he loved more than anything in the world?” The fingerbones of his free hand found their way into the gaps between her claws. His hands have always been so tiny and inadequate, but squeezed into hers they fit just right, palms pressed together and fingers perfectly parallel to each other like two interlocking pieces of a puzzle. Physicists are too busy believing in chaos theory to care much about destiny, but being with her has always made him feel like maybe he belongs someplace, and maybe, despite everything, he’d somehow found it.

“S-S-Sans…” Her voice was a tiny breath.

She was completely captivated by him. He smiled, as faux-casual as a faking faker could be. Whatever onlookers might have been present faded away into the background when he met her transfixed stare. As far as he was concerned, they were the only two monsters in the entire world. With one smooth and practiced motion his hand held out the box and popped it open, displaying the ring like it was the punchline at the end of one of his physical gags. “wanna join me in holy matri-bony?”

What followed was the heaviest silence of his entire life. He felt her hand go slack in his, and her eyes dropped to the floor. As close to her as he was, he could hear her immediately start hyperventilating.

“it’s ok, al. take your time.” was what his mouth said, but his soul was aching in agony. She was so quiet, and that look on her face didn’t scream ‘needs time to process the situation’ so much as it screamed ‘doesn’t want to say what’s on her mind’.

“C-can we talk about this? M-maybe someplace…not here?” He was suddenly hyper-aware that they were not the only two monsters in the entire world, nor even the only two in the bar at the moment. He could feel eyes on him, pitying, judging eyes, and it made him feel sick to his lack-of stomach. She didn’t look like she was faring much better, judging by the wells of tears already forming in the corners of her eyes. He had been so sure she would just throw herself at him and be so caught up in the romantic bliss of being swept off her feet like in her anime that she might even revel in the attention it would bring.

He hadn’t considered that maybe he was just going to be pressuring her into doing something she didn’t want to with an audience.

“oh uh, yeah. sure.” He looked around the crowd, feeling worse stage fright than he had his first nights doing standup, caught without a joke, naked and vulnerable. All their friends were there, of course, it was their party. She was surrounded by people who cared about her, who would comfort her. She’d be fine. He was the idiot that ruined what should have been her night. “i’m uh, not feelin much like partying anymore. you guys enjoy the rest of tonight. drinks on me, of course. not literally, heh, i’m dry bones.” He shoved the ring back into his pocket and reached up to pull his hood over himself before remembering he was still wearing that goddamn stupid suit. “night, everyone” 

He shortcut home without looking back.

Not ten minutes into barely-restrained ugly crying with only Mettaton quiz show reruns for company, there was very a quiet knock on the door. One of the curses of living next door to the place you just dramatically exited. Not even enough time to wipe the tears off his face and put on one of his fake grins, and he really wasn’t feeling like talking to anyone right now. He slumped down deeper into the couch and tried very hard to be interested in the TV.

“S-Sans!” Yeah, there was no way in hell he could ignore that voice. He found himself shuffling to the door. He decided that it was because it was just damn impolite to leave an exotherm outside in the snow, and had nothing to do with how Alphys was the person he currently wanted to be with most in the world. He opened the door just a crack, giving him the ability to see out but not her the ability to see in.

“evenin’ al. was just catching up on some tv.” She stuck a takeout bag in the tiny door space. The intoxicating smell of Grillby’s filled the room.

“M-mind if I uh, j-join you? I brought some s-snacks.” He opened the door all the way. Grillby’s was hard to turn down. Definitely Grillby’s, and definitely not his unending need to make this better between them.

“isn’t there some kind of big party for you tonight? wouldn’t want you to miss it.” He winked at her, the tears still obviously streaming down his face. There were no two monsters in the world better at playing the denial game. It was one of Sans’s favorite things about Alphys; she was the only person he’d ever met who could go toe to toe with him in a bullshit-off.

She laughed like the concept of laughter was a foreign idea to her. That was her one giveaway: she was always more nervous when she was lying. Come to think of it, Sans might be the only one who seemed capable of discerning Alphys’s normal level of nervous from her ‘bullshitting and trying to get away with it’ level of nervous. 

“Y-you know how much I h-hate parties. I t-think I’d way rather be in here with you.” He grinned, parting his arms open to invite her in for a hug. She gleefully accepted, running inside and giving him the tackle-glomp of a lifetime.

They snuggled up together on the couch and ate their burgers in silence. They might have been physically in each other’s lap, but Sans could feel the gap between them getting wider with every moment. Alphys could undoubtedly feel it too, her body twitched occasionally with barely-masked anxiety. Something was going to give, and it was only a matter of who would be the one to break first.

“S-Sans.” And there it was. “S-something bothering you?” She was trembling so bad now she was rattling his bones just sitting on his lap and she still would rather maintain the peace than destroy her façade of casualness. He was going to have to do it, then. This wasn’t fair to her.

“yeah.” Now they were both crying again, neither looking at the other. Sans would’ve found this farce hilarious if he wasn’t one of the members partaking in it. “i uh, asked my best friend to marry me tonight.”

“S-she didn’t say yes, huh?” Man, who knew a single held shot of Mettaton being showered in rose petals could be such goddamn fascinating cinema? “I w-w-wanted to say yes, Sans. I still do.”

He shrugged. Might as well get off this bandaid with one quick rip, since it was already oozing pus.

“i understand, al. still don’t have an answer to that question you asked me. not a good one, anyway.” He never wanted to have this talk with her, or anyone else, for that matter. She sucked in a shaky breath. Had she been worried that he wouldn’t understand her reasoning when it was so obvious?

“It’s just…it’s just h-how do you even carry on with life, knowing s-something like that? It’s w-why I couldn’t tell anyone about it when I w-was talking about the project.” Good idea on her part. They really were the two greatest liars in the Underground if they were planning on keeping a secret that big from the world. “I uh, I c-can’t get my hopes up like that, Sans. I d-don’t want a promise neither of us can keep.”

“hope, al. that’s my shitty, non-scientific answer to your question.” He scooted her off his lap and into the space on the couch next to him, then slowly pulled out his soul. Her eyes glimmered from the faint white glow of it, used to how dull it was after years of seeing it. “you know how much hope i have. my soul’s practically empty.” He cradled it in his hand, reminding himself how easily it could be shattered at any moment by even the lightest tap. He never showed it to anyone besides her, not even the mass of doctors who wanted to figure out why he was always capped out at one point of hope even after sleeping or eating. That single sliver of hope was all he had, and it showed in everything Sans was. “i literally can’t get my hopes up, heh.” 

He held his soul out in one hand to her. She took it in her trembling claws, making them both blush. 

“i never had any hope to start with, al. you’ve been my hope.” When she found him, he was a soon-to-be college dropout with a terrible drinking problem. Her hope had shaped him into something amazing. Now, he was the Royal Physicist, sober for eleven years, receiving accolades for making an actual fucking time machine. “i’ve read the same reports you have. i know what’s coming, just like you do. but i ain’t ready to give that hope up.” He pushed his soul back into his ribcage and took her claws into his hands. “please, al. don’t give that hope up. i don’t think i can come back from losing it.”

God, he was so pathetic.

“S-Sans, when I asked you that question, I w-was fully expecting to hear you say ‘Chemistry says that e-everything matters.’ I w-was really tired. I needed your uh, l-levity.” She pouted, wringing her claws. “W-what I mean to say is, I uh, I need you, Sans. You do that, somehow, make things be ok j-just by being there.” He smirked. She was being adorable.

“how about we strike up a deal, then? i’ll keep existing near you and you keep hoping for the future, and together we’ll laugh in the face of what’s coming.” She smiled at him.

“Y-yeah, that sounds like a good deal.”

“and maybe, just to make sure we both know we’re serious about this deal, you can wear this ring around. so you always remember our deal, of course.” It was so rare to be able to invoke that face on anyone but Papyrus, but always worth it. Nothing in the world beat a good jape.

She certainly out-japed him, though. Receiving a very long, passionate kiss in response to a prank was something he was not expecting. 

“Y-yeah, Sans.”

“What does anything matter?”  
*  
“Will you marry me?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So how about that there Deltarune, huh guys? I'll bet anything I'm going to have some 10k Susie angstfic written and posted by the end of the month, because I am nothing if not predictable.
> 
> ...Oh right, the chapter you just read. When I was coming up with the idea for it, I was like 'this is probably going to be the shortest chapter, I don't have much I want to do with it' and then it ended up being the longest by far. Most of it was written before Toby decided to drop a whole hecking game on us out of nowhere, which thoroughly delayed me finishing it. Thanks, T-Fox. (That is not sarcastic, thank you very much for a lovely free game)
> 
> Nothing that was canonized in Deltarune is likely going to find its way into this fic (probably), especially in regards to anything Gaster-related, because I want my one legally allowed wild speculation Gaster story before canon comes and knocks down my castle and tells me my vessel will be deleted.
> 
> Lastly, more of a housekeeping note. I do not, in any way condone Sans and Alphys's relationship in this chapter, or in general. Codependency is not a great founding for a relationship, ya dig?


	14. A Black River and A Blue Cavern

Alphys stared out into the inky blackness surrounding the boat on all sides. She couldn’t tell whether it was water or something thicker they glided on top of, seeming too dark to be the river that connected all parts of the Underground, but what else could it be? It reflected a distorted image of herself onto its calm and mirror-like surface: white bone with a frill of bright yellow poking out the back, the yellow serving as the only splash of color in this oppressive monochromatic darkness.

“He uh, r-really…?” The Riverperson bobbed their hood noddingly.

“A butterfly’s wingbeat, two steps one way and a thousand another. The judge can see the past with a crystal clarity unrivaled, and yet his perception of the future is as muddled as his thoughts. Tra la la~”

This was the first time she’d really considered the ramifications of this different universe. She looked down at her bony claws and twisted around the engagement ring she’d never taken much notice of beforehand. It suddenly seemed like the most important tiny strip of gold in the world; a promise laid out by a monster famous for his hatred of commitment.

“In this universe, he was h-happy. He didn’t g-give up. And it was- it was me?” The ring felt heavy. Her bones felt heavy. This was it, this was the world where Sans had found his happiness, where she and he were as close as they’d always been. There was no messy falling out that led to both of them sinking into deep despair. This was what she had been seeking, more so even than the hope of meeting some monster she had never known.

This was the world where they were both happier. So, why did she feel so…?

“You wear a ring, a skull, a burden. You took his soul, his heart, his pain. But for these weights, what did he give you, little scientist?”

She stuttered, caught in a moment of selfish reflection red-handed. The Riverperson giggled, clearly not taking her self-reflection as seriously as she was.

“A uh, p-promise. We’re g-going to bring back s-somebody important to both of us...” She forced her mouth to form the name, but nothing came out. “The f-former Royal Scientist, uh, before me.” They went from their usual ominous hunch to standing straight up at mention of Gaster. They seemed to know plenty of things no one else did, could the man erased from history somehow possibly be amongst them? “S-Sans needs this person, and maybe I w-want to know what I’ve been missing, too. I can’t j-just go back to living a lie.”

They turned their hood towards the inky blackness. 

“You know, this was his final gift to you, little fossil. There are many things that can be said about the man who speaks in hands, and many of them true, but that he does not love his children is not one of them.” She beamed.

“Y-you know him?”

They nodded gingerly, still staring out at the dark.

“You can hear many things if you listen, fossil. Easy to hear gossip when you are the only public transportation in the Underground. Easier still when you service more than one Underground.” They reached a hand up to stroke the neck of their boat, humming. “All rivers lead to the sea, and all seas run together, tra la la~” Seemingly uninterested in continuing this conversation with Alphys, they started to sing a haunting little wordless tune to themselves.

She tugged on the sleeve of their robe.

“W-where is he? Can you take me to him?”

They stopped their song and turned to face her. There was a heavy silence as the faceless mass of robe stood before her unflinchingly, a wall of darkness before a sea of darkness.

“He does not want you to find him.” All the carefree joy was instantly sapped from their demeanor. “Have you thought about what it is like to be forgotten, little fossil? In some ways it can be almost liberating.” 

Oh, she’d thought about it, all right. Staring into the abyss at the dump, the burden of a thousand lies and mistakes weighing her down, wondering just what was at the bottom. To be forgotten by everyone she’d ever wronged was all she had dreamed of staring into that pit. Not that she was willing to admit those kinds of feelings to the Riverperson; she had been barely able to confess them to Undyne months after they had passed.

“He misses you dearly, of course. Worries himself sick over you three. Blessed with omnipotence and all he uses it for is making himself upset.” They chuckled. “Personally, I would use it for catching the newest Mettaton special a week early, but then again, he never did care much for pop culture.” ‘Blessed with omnipotence’. Not dead, not alive. Transcending both. Omnipotent.

Alphys trembled.

“H-he’s…” A shadowy claw poked from the sleeve of their robe and pressed itself to the nose tip of her quivering skull.

“Shh, rude to speak of someone who is listening.” 

She clung to her lab coat, scrunched up on that hellish ferry in that hellish place between places with a god watching her, while another god waited on her return to murder her. Not for the first time, she realized just how out of her league she was. This wasn’t a forum debate about unnecessary anime sequels. This wasn’t routine maintenance on Mettaton, or harboring a secret crush on Undyne. This wasn’t even helping her oldest friend out of a deep depression. This was bigger than her, or anything she’d ever known. This was what monsters were never supposed to know of, the holes in reality that were never supposed to be stepped into.

The bones in her tail shook like a rattlesnake’s, sending little anxious clacking sounds into the darkness.

“The mortal man ‘Wingdings Gaster’ is gone, little fossil. Shattered across time and space. Where an anxious and tired scientist who hoped for a better world once was, nothing but his legacy remains, detached of its meaning. I cannot take you to him, because he never was and never will be.” Tiny pinpricks of light glowed brighter inside their hood with every word, making the already horrified Alphys even more nervous. “But if you seek the man who speaks in hands, divine in all but name,” 

The seams of their robe tore open, bathing the infinite darkness in blinding white. Alphys threw her claws up over her eyes, but it hardly mattered. The white seeped through every part of her; the same as being thrown into the void, but somehow in reverse. Without a body attached to it the Riverperson’s voice continued.

“He is right this way~”

The light faded out. Alphys slowly opened her eyes, rubbing them with her claws to get rid of the blinking white afterimages still lingering.

“No.” There was a voice that didn’t belong to the Riverperson, though Alphys’s eyes had still not adjusted enough to see who was speaking. It sounded like harsh radio static. “No. Send her away. She mustn’t… Mustn’t see me like this.” More radio static sounds, with faint words overlapping them. Very similar to the way some of the Amalgamates spoke on their worst days. Not a very pleasant feeling on her brain.

She was not sure who she had been expecting to see when her eyes finally fixed themselves. A skeleton? Whatever a god looked like? Whatever it was, she definitely wasn’t expecting to be sitting in a small cavern in Waterfall. Or that she and the Riverperson would be seemingly alone there.

“Temper, temper. I am just a humble Riverperson. I take people to where they ask me to go, as is my civic duty to the good people of the Underground.” They appeared to be staring at the far wall of the cavern, talking to it as if there was someone there. “You act like you didn’t foresee her arrival at this time from the moment this universe was created. You’ve had millennia to plan, the least you can do is deliver your cryptic nonsense to her yourself.”

“I had hoped your own particular brand of cryptic nonsense would suffice in keeping her at bay. And you know how that anomaly interferes with my clairvoyance.” Annoyed radio static sounded even worse grating on the inside of her skull.

She cleared her throat to get the attention of the Riverperson and the wall they were arguing with. The Riverperson turned around, clearly startled.

“Terribly sorry, little fossil. Here we are. Speaking with an omnipotent being is easy, of course. But to have them speak back, that is a little tougher. Unless you are a schizophrenic.” They chuckled and paused as if they were waiting on her to laugh with them.

For some reason, maybe the whole ‘learning your adopted father who was erased from reality now quasi-exists as a god’ thing, it was hard for her to laugh. 

“You might wish to know where we are, yes?” They stepped closer to her, gesturing at the ordinary seeming walls of the small cave. “Or perhaps, why it appears we are alone here, yet you can hear his voice?”

They seemed like pretty rhetorical questions, but she nodded anyway. 

“That schizophrenic joke, little fossil. It was not completely a joke.” 

She found her way to her feet, reaching out to grab the Riverperson’s robe. When her claw collided with it, there was nothing there for her to hold onto. Like it was nothing, the Riverperson had vanished into thin air. Alphys was suddenly completely alone in this strange cavern.

She whipped around in a panic, scanning the walls of the cave. Each wall looked exactly like the ones surrounding it: Blue-gray, stony, lit up in white by bioluminescent mushrooms growing from the tiny cracks in the rock. There was no immediately obvious exit hole, no loose rocks implying there had ever been one. She was alone, alone and trapped.

“Shh, Alphys, child. Don’t worry, you are safe here.” The radio static filled her skull again. This time instead of feeling harsh to her ears, it was almost calming; the buzzing acted like a kind of gentle white noise, and the words layered on top were the calming whispers of a parent soothing their scared child.

Not alone.

“Though after this meeting, I must ask you never to return.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I confess something? Writing this fic lately has been like, playing Jenga or something. There's a lot of extremely ugly prose in the first couple of chapters (and for anybody who's been reading since then, thank you so much for putting up with past-me's writing horribleness to get to current me's slightly less horribleness)Parts I literally cringe rereading. Tone was all over the place while I was getting into the 'flow'. (Tone is still all over the place, and I still can't do pacing worth a goshdarn). I've been writing 'by the seat of my pants' as it were, and it's becoming more and more obvious as this fic drags on. 
> 
> Basically, there's a lot of things I would really really like to go back and rewrite. And part of me wants to go back and do precisely that. The other part of me, however, knows me, and knows that I will inevitably get bored rewriting the thing I technically already done went and wrote. And while I'm at it, there's entire chapters that I still really, really like and wouldn't want to change much of. 
> 
> This is probably the longest fanfic I have ever written in my life, and I'd wager it's not even halfway done. And that, too, is daunting me into not going back to square one and starting over. It'd be pretty nice to actually finish something, since I'm notoriously bad at doing that.
> 
> So what I'm thinking about doing is just kind of, powering through? And hoping that the Jenga tower doesn't come crashing down.
> 
> Would love to hear any reader opinions on this dilemma. Thanks for reading, as always.


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